The map London has in its head

LONDON — As the world's oldest subway, better known as the Tube, celebrates its 150th birthday, here's a familiar but gently tweaked reminder:

Mind the map.

The London Underground is justly famous as a defining feature of the British capital, a wonder of the modern age that whooshes millions of riders around the city every day.

But a London institution that may have an even tighter grip on the public imagination is having a birthday too (its 80th): the Tube map.

Instantly recognizable the world over, the simple yet elegant diagram of the 249-mile subway network is hailed as one of the great images of the 20th century, a marvel of graphic design. Its rainbow palette, clean angles and pleasing if slightly old-fashioned font (Johnston, for typography buffs) have endured since hurried passengers first stuffed pocket versions of the map into their raincoats in 1933.

"It's a design icon," said Anna Renton, senior curator at the London Transport Museum. "You shouldn't use that word too often, but it really is."

It's been copied by other cities and riffed on by artists and satirists. It's omnipresent in souvenir shops, plastered on mugs, underwear, mouse pads and tote bags, on sale next to the "Mind the Gap" T-shirts.

Perhaps most impressively, the image is stamped onto Londoners' brains. If the Tube is how people get around London, the Tube map is how many conceive of this sprawling city, their sense of its geography shaped — and sometimes warped — by the drawing's streamlined, reductive layout.

Tell a Londoner the name of a neighborhood on the other side of town, and you may get a blank stare; mention the closest Underground line and station, and the mental GPS kicks in.

All credit goes to a problem-solving electrical draftsman named Harry Beck, who came up with the design in his spare time in 1931.

At that point, more geographically accurate maps of the Tube were already in use. But the expansion of the network into the suburbs made such depictions unwieldy, and their curving, intersecting lines had come to resemble a nest of snakes, a plate of spaghetti or London having a very bad hair day.

Inspired, some say, by electric-circuit diagrams, Beck straightened out the lines, drew only 45- and 90-degree angles, and truncated distances between outlying stations. Then he submitted his unusual schematic rendering to the London Underground's publicity department.

Officials rejected it.

"They thought it was too radical, and they thought that people maybe wouldn't be able to understand it," Renton said.

Undeterred, Beck made a few minor adjustments and tried again. This time, officials decided to give it a chance, printing 750,000 free pocket-sized copies in January 1933, with an almost apologetic explanation attached: "A new design for an old map. We should welcome your comments. Please write to the publicity manager."

No responses have been unearthed yet in the archives, said curator Renton. "We can only assume it was widely accepted and really taken on board by Londoners. And they never looked back."

The design led to imitations around the world. Within a few years, it was copied by the transit system in Sydney, Australia. The New York subway map of the 1970s also paid homage to Beck's brainchild.

"It was absolutely revolutionary. I always say it's probably the best bit of information design of the 20th century," said London native Mark Noad. "It was his ability to simplify it and still make it understandable that was his great achievement."

Noad should know: A designer himself, he got a taste of what it's like to tamper with a classic when he had the temerity to produce his own version of a Tube map two years ago, just for the fun and challenge of it.

Over the years, Noad says, London Underground has updated Beck's original diagram but not necessarily for the better; in his opinion, new train lines were drawn onto the map in a way that skewed geography further and made things more confusing.

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Santa Cruz hit hard by officers' deaths

SANTA CRUZ — Flags throughout this sparkling beach town flew at half-staff Wednesday. The entire Police Department was meeting with grief counselors. Handmade signs cropped up, sympathy cards to a stunned city.

"Thank you for your service Santa Cruz Police Department. RIP Detective Baker. RIP Detective Butler." That's what Mary Gregg wrote in neat black letters on yellow construction paper, hanging her message in the window of the downtown check-cashing store where she works.

"Something," she felt, "had to be said today."

Best known for its surfing museum and a roller coaster that Bay Area newspaper columnist Herb Caen described as "one long shriek," Santa Cruz is not used to the kind of pain that rippled through town the day after a gunfight left two veteran officers — and the man they were investigating — dead.

The city's Police Department, which has less than 100 sworn officers, had operated for 150 years without losing a single one in the line of duty. Until Tuesday afternoon, when two veteran detectives in plainclothes walked up to Jeremy Goulet's house as part of a misdemeanor sexual assault investigation.

Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker, 51, and Det. Elizabeth Butler, 38, were killed on Goulet's doorstep, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak said during a news conference near an impromptu memorial at police headquarters.

"We don't know all that happened when they came into contact with Goulet," said Wowak, whose department is leading the investigation so Santa Cruz police can mourn. "We do know what was left in the aftermath."

The 35-year-old Goulet, who had a long history of run-ins with the law, killed and disarmed the detectives before fleeing in Baker's car, Wowak said. Law enforcement officers from throughout the region began a sweep of the Santa Cruz neighborhood where Baker and Butler were slain. A short time later, Goulet ditched the car and tried to flee on foot.

In the ensuing gun battle, Wowak said, Goulet shot up a firetruck, sending firefighters, medical personnel and passersby scrambling. After killing the suspect, authorities discovered Goulet had been wearing body armor and had three guns.

"It is our belief that two of the three weapons belonged to the Santa Cruz Police Department, but we haven't confirmed it," said Wowak, adding that it was still unclear whether Goulet had taken the body armor from Baker's car or had it on before the shooting broke out.

"We know now that he was distraught," the sheriff said. "We know now that he had the intention of harming himself and possibly the police.… There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the officers who engaged Goulet stopped an imminent threat to the community."

Goulet had been arrested Friday on suspicion of disorderly conduct. Local news accounts said he had broken into the home of a co-worker and been fired from his job at The Kind Grind coffeehouse Saturday. A manager at the beachfront shop declined to comment Wednesday.

According to Goulet's father, the barista — who recently had moved from Berkeley to Santa Cruz — was a ticking time bomb who held police and the justice system in deep contempt. Ronald Goulet, 64, told the Associated Press that his son had had numerous run-ins with the law and had sworn he would never go back to jail.

But the elder Goulet said he never thought his troubled son would turn to such violence.

Goulet said his son undermined any success in the military (he reportedly was a member of the Marine Corps Reserves and later the Army) or college because of an insatiable desire to peep in the windows of women as they showered or dressed.

"He's got one problem, peeping in windows," his father said. "I asked him, 'Why don't you just go to a strip club?' He said he wants a good girl that doesn't know she's being spied on, and said he couldn't stop doing it."

In 2008, a Portland, Ore., jury convicted Jeremy Goulet on misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of a firearm and invasion of personal privacy after he peeked into a woman's bathroom as she showered, said Don Rees, a chief deputy district attorney in Multnomah County.

Goulet faced additional charges, including attempted murder, after he allegedly fired a gun at the woman's boyfriend. The two had fought after Goulet was spotted outside the woman's condo, but a jury acquitted him of those charges, Rees said.

During the trial, Goulet admitted that he liked to use his cellphone to record unsuspecting women undressing, according to the Oregonian newspaper. Prosecutors alleged he had peeped at women "hundreds of times" without getting caught.

Goulet was given three years' probation, Rees said, but spent time in jail after his probation was revoked.

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Eric Garcetti showed political savvy during busy student years

Fourth in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls.

Ben Jealous still recalls walking into a Columbia University meeting of a new group called Black Men for Anita Hill and seeing a half-Jewish, half-Mexican kid from Los Angeles leading the discussion.

"What's he doing here?" he asked the professor who organized the meeting.

"Honestly brother," the teacher replied, "he's the only one here I'm certain will really work hard."

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It was Jealous' first exposure to Eric Garcetti, a committed young progressive known on campus for gliding between different worlds and liberal causes. As a political science major at Columbia, Garcetti patched plaster and painted walls in low-income apartments in Harlem while also serving as the president of an exclusive literary society known for its wealthy membership. He led a men's discussion group on gender and sexuality, ran successfully for student government, and wrote and performed in musicals.

His busy student years offered hints of the future political persona that would later help him win a Los Angeles City Council seat and emerge as a leading candidate for mayor. As he pursued countless progressive causes — improved race relations in New York City, democracy in Burma and human rights in Ethiopia — Garcetti also exhibited a careful stewardship of his image and a desire to get along with everyone.

Some of his critics complain that he is confrontation averse, and say his chameleon-like abilities are political. Others complain that he has lost touch with his activist roots, citing his recent advocacy for a plan to allow taller and bigger buildings in Hollywood despite strong opposition from some community members.

But Jealous, who went on to study with Garcetti at Oxford, where they were both Rhodes scholars, remembers his classmate as "authentically committed" to social justice and naturally at ease in different settings. That was a valuable trait in early 1990s New York City, when tensions between whites and blacks were high, said Jealous, who is now the president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Against a backdrop of racial violence, including the stabbing of the Rev. Al Sharpton in Brooklyn in 1991, "there was an urgent need to build bridges," he said.

On Columbia's campus, Garcetti pushed to involve more men in Take Back the Night protests against sexual violence and tracked hate crimes as president of the National Student Coalition Against Harassment. He also worked against homelessness and founded the Columbia Urban Experience, a program that exposes incoming freshmen to city life through volunteerism.

Judith Russell, a Columbia professor who taught Garcetti in a yearlong urban politics course, remembers him as a skilled organizer. "Eric was one of the best people I've ever met at getting people to agree," she said.

He was also ambitious. Russell says she wrote countless recommendation letters for Garcetti, who was always applying for some new opportunity. "For most people I have a file or two. For Eric I have a folder," she said.

Even as a student, Garcetti went to great lengths to guard his image and public reputation. In a 1991 letter to a campus newspaper, a 20-year-old Garcetti sought a retraction of a quote that he acknowledged was accurate. A reporter wrote that Garcetti called owners of a store that declined to participate in a Columbia-sponsored can recycling program "assholes." Garcetti said the comment was off the record.

"I would ask, then, if you would retract the quote, not because of the morality of my position, rather the ethics of the quoting," he wrote.

That self-awareness came partly from being raised in a politically active family. Back in Los Angeles, his father was mounting a successful campaign for county district attorney. His mother, the daughter of a wealthy clothier, ran a community foundation. Her father, who had been President Lyndon B. Johnson's tailor, made headlines in the 1960s when he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on Johnson to exit the Vietnam War.

Garcetti's family wealth allowed him to carry on the legacy of political activism. While attending L.A.'s exclusive Harvard School for Boys, he traveled to Ethiopia to deliver medical supplies. In college, while other students worked at summer jobs, he traveled twice to Burma to teach democracy to leaders of the resistance movement.

In 1993, after receiving a master's degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Garcetti departed for Oxford. There he met Cory Booker, a fellow Rhodes scholar who is now the mayor of Newark, N.J., and a likely candidate for the U.S. Senate. Garcetti, Booker said, "was one of those guys who would be in the pub at midnight talking passionately about making a better world."

In England, Garcetti worked with Amnesty International and also met his future wife, Amy Wakeland, another Rhodes scholar with activist leanings. Garcetti remembers being impressed when Wakeland missed President Clinton's visit to the Rhodes House at Oxford because she was on the streets protesting tuition hikes. Her worldview aligned with his, he told friends.

In his second year at Oxford, Garcetti persuaded student leaders to join him in a hunger strike after the passage of Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot measure that denied immigrants access to state healthcare and schools.

Looking back, he sees the hunger strike as a bit of youthful folly. "We were young," Garcetti said. "Was a fast an ocean away going to overturn 187? No. But in my book, whether it's me in Los Angeles seeing an injustice across an ocean or vice versa, you have to stand up and be heard."

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Divergent views on illegal immigration emerge in state GOP

WASHINGTON — California's elected Republicans have long had a simple approach to illegal immigration: Those who broke the law coming here should leave.

But the confluence of politics and personal threat have now put many Republican legislators in Washington and Sacramento in a very different place: eager to embrace an overhaul of immigration laws and willing to consider legal status for some of the country's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants, 3 million of whom live in California.

In Sacramento and Washington, party orthodoxy is being defied. At least six GOP legislators in Sacramento have aligned themselves with Democrats to support a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally. Several congressional Republicans from California have said they would consider granting legal status to some illegal immigrants as part of a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

The issue, which has tormented California Republicans for a generation, is unlikely to be far from members' minds this weekend as the state party holds its spring convention in Sacramento.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona), who once declared himself "wholeheartedly against amnesty," is among those now willing to consider granting legal status to some illegal immigrants, under specific conditions.

"I have a number of people who say, 'hell no,' " said Calvert, whose district is 36% Latino. "But I have a lot more people who understand that we're not going to do mass deportations."

A number of California Republicans remain vehemently opposed to granting legal status to illegal immigrants or won't consider it until convinced that the border is secure.

"You've got to secure the border, and you've got to prove it's secure. Period. We'll talk after that," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine).

"There is a path to citizenship," added Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay.) "It's followed by millions of legal immigrants who have obeyed all of our laws."

The shift among others has been driven by recent election results and the expectation that Republicans' woeful trajectory in the state will not change without an alteration in the party's views.

In November, Republicans in Sacramento ceded a supermajority to Democrats in both houses of the California Legislature for the first time since 1883. At the same time, the number of Republicans in the state's 53-member House delegation dropped to 15, their lowest share since 1936, according to UC San Diego political scientist Gary Jacobson.

Barring a change, the future looks more bleak. The fastest-growing group of voters in the state are Latinos, whose voter registration has soared in the years since Republicans pushed 1994's Proposition 187, which would have banned government services to illegal immigrants. Latinos are expected to surpass whites to form a plurality of California's population by next year, according to state Department of Finance estimates, and Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo estimates that 23% of the state's registered voters are Latino. And they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

"The demographic changes are … irrefutable, and they require not just small message changes in the Republican Party but a tectonic shift," said Assemblyman Jeff Gorell (R-Camarillo), one of those who has broken with GOP orthodoxy. Gorell is among those who support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. He also supports granting them driver's licenses if they can document they have paid taxes in California, as proposed in legislation by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville).

Already the state's demographic shifts have cast an ominous shadow over some Republicans. Mary Bono Mack, a veteran Republican member of Congress seen as having statewide potential, was ousted from her Palm Springs district last year by a Latino Democrat, Raul Ruiz. And four of the state's 15 GOP members of Congress represent districts where Latinos make up 40% or more of the population; five represent districts at least 30% Latino, according to the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials Educational Fund.

"I'd not be truthful if I said that didn't have an impact," said Rep. John Campbell (R-Irvine).

Republicans also have come under pressure from interests in the Central Valley who back immigration measures that would allow a steady stream of farm workers. That area is home to many of the surviving Republican elected officials.

Nonetheless, some in the party dispute the notion that a change in policy is required. (The state party's platform asserts that "allowing illegal immigrants to remain in California undermines respect for the law.")

"I don't think pandering to a small group of people is going to help the Republican Party," said Celeste Greig, president of the California Republican Assembly, a grass-roots organization promoting conservative ideas within the party. "I don't think we should grant citizenship to people who blatantly came and broke the law."

California GOP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro also opposes measures that include a path to legalization. The country should secure the border before it considers what to do about residents who arrived illegally, Del Beccaro said.

Jim Brulte, the former Senate minority leader widely expected to be elected Sunday to replace Del Beccaro as chairman, has said the party needs to work harder to reach Latino voters. But Brulte declined to stake a position on the party's platform, saying his focus would be fundraising and rebuilding the organization's infrastructure.

richard.simon@latimes.com

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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DNA science points to better treatment for acne

Ancient Egyptians were vexed by it, using sulfur to dry it out. Shakespeare wrote of its "bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o' fire."

Today, acne plagues us still. Doctors can cure some cancers and transplant vital organs like hearts, but they still have trouble getting rid of the pimples and splotches that plague 85% of us at some time in our lives — usually, when we're teenagers and particularly sensitive about they way we look.

But new research hints that there's hope for zapping zits in the future, thanks to advances in genetic research.

Using state-of-the-art DNA sequencing techniques to evaluate the bacteria lurking in the pores of 101 study volunteers' noses, scientists discovered a particular strain of Propionibacterium acnes bacteria that may be able to defend against other versions of P. acnes that pack a bigger breakout-causing punch.

As best as dermatologists can tell, zits occur when bacteria that reside in human skin, including P. acnes, feed on oils in the pores and prompt an immune response that results in red, sometimes pus-filled bumps. But the study subjects who had the newly discovered bacterial strain weren't suffering from whiteheads or blackheads, according to a report published Thursday in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

Someday, the realization that "not all P. acnes are created equal" might help dermatologists devise treatments that more precisely target bad strains while allowing beneficial ones to thrive, said Dr. Noah Craft, a dermatologist at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute who conducted the study with colleagues from UCLA and Washington University in St. Louis.

Doctors might prescribe probiotic creams that deliver "good" P. acnes to the face the same way a daily serving of yogurt helps restore healthy bacteria in the digestive tract.

"There are healthy strains that we need on our skin," Craft said. "The idea that you'd use a nuclear bomb to kill everything — what we're currently doing with antibiotics and other treatments — just doesn't make sense."

The research is part of a broad effort backed by the National Institutes of Health to characterize the so-called human microbiome: the trillions of microbes that live in and on our bodies and evolve along with us, sometimes causing illness and often promoting good health.

Most of the microbiome attention so far has gone to studying species in the gut, said study leader Huiying Li, an assistant professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine. But the NIH's Human Microbiome Project, which funds her research, also looks at microbial communities in the nasal passages, the mouth, the urogenital tract and the skin.

Li said she became interested in studying acne because the skin microbiome seemed particularly understudied.

The research team recruited 101 patients in their teens and 20s from dermatology clinics in Southern California. Among them, 49 had acne and 52 had "normal skin" and were not experiencing breakouts but had come to the clinics for other problems.

Doctors used adhesive pore strips to remove skin bacteria from patients' noses. The researchers then collected the waxy plugs — a combination of bacteria, oils, dead skin cells and other stuff — and used DNA to figure out which bacteria were present.

They found that the P. acnes species accounted for about 90% of the bacteria in pores, in both healthy patients and acne sufferers. Digging a little deeper into the DNA, they found that two particular strains appeared in about 20% of acne sufferers, while a third strain was found only in acne-free patients.

"Dogs are dogs, but a Chihuahua isn't a Great Dane," Craft said. "People with acne had pit bulls on their skin. Healthy people had poodles."

The team then sequenced the complete genomes — about 2.6 million base pairs apiece — of 66 of the P. acnes specimens to explore in more depth how the good and bad strains differed.

The two notable bad strains had genes, probably picked up from other bacteria or viruses, that are thought to change the shape of a microbe to make it more virulent. The researchers hypothesized that the foreign DNA, perhaps by sticking more effectively to human host tissues, may help trigger an inflammatory response in the skin: acne.

The good strain, on the other hand, contained an element known to work like an immune system in bacteria, Li said. Perhaps it allows this P. acne to fight off intruders and prevent pimples from forming.

Li said the researchers did not know why some people had the bad P. acnes strains and others did not, and whether genetics or environment played a bigger role.

Dr. Vincent Young, who conducts microbiome research at the University of Michigan Medical School but wasn't involved in the acne project, said advances in sequencing technology and analysis made the new study possible. In the past, he said, scientists wouldn't have tried to sequence dozens of genomes in a single species.

"They'd say, why waste the money?" he said. "Now you can do this in a couple of days."

Li and Craft — neither of whom suffered bad acne as teens — plan to keep up the work.

More research is needed to come up with super-targeted anti-microbial therapies, or to develop a probiotic cream for acne sufferers.

Craft continues collecting samples from patients' pores. He hopes to study whether twins share the same microbial profiles, how acne severity is reflected in bacteria populations, and how things change in a single patient over the course of a treatment regimen.

One of the study volunteers, 19-year-old UC Santa Cruz student Brandon Pritzker, said he would have loved to have treated his acne without affecting the rest of his body. When he took Accutane, he suffered back pain and mood shifts.

Now off the drug, Pritzker said he is at peace with his pimples. "I still have breakouts, but I figure I'm 19, that's the way it's going to be," he said.

But, he added, "it hindered my confidence at the time. Kids with clear skin are probably a little happier."

eryn.brown@latimes.com

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How sequester cuts are made can be telling

WASHINGTON — Only days before the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman was due to leave Norfolk, Va., for the Persian Gulf this month, the Pentagon abruptly canceled the deployment, pleading poverty.

With cuts in the federal budget scheduled to take effect Friday, Pentagon officials said they feared that sending the carrier on a six-month cruise to the Middle East would empty their operations accounts.

President Obama on Tuesday alluded to the decision to hold back the Truman. "The threat of these cuts has forced the Navy to cancel the deployment," he said in a speech in southeastern Virginia, a few miles from the Norfolk naval base. He sought to lay the responsibility for the imminent cuts on Congress, adding that "only Congress has the power to pass a law that stops these damaging cuts and replaces them" with more sensible alternatives.

But on the same day that the Defense Department cuts are to begin, one of the Navy's newest vessels, the littoral combat ship Freedom, will set sail for Singapore on a long-planned, eight-month deployment, part of the Obama administration's emphasis on rebuilding the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, officials said.

The contrast between the Truman and the Freedom is a revealing reminder that, while the spending cuts, known as a sequester, will be far-reaching and in some cases severe, there is an element of gamesmanship in the way the administration portrays the effects.

As the White House looks to put Congress on the defensive for failing to move on a plan to halt the sequester, it's a powerful argument to blame the budget mechanism for blocking an aircraft carrier from the conflict-racked Middle East.

Similar high-profile cuts have begun to crop up elsewhere in the government. On Tuesday, administration officials announced that immigration authorities were releasing several hundred nonviolent detainees from holding facilities around the country. Because of the budget cuts, officials asserted, the government won't have enough money to hold all its 34,000 detainees. Officials say the released detainees are under other forms of supervision, including electronic and telephonic monitoring. Their cases continue to proceed in court.

Some defense officials and outside analysts say the Pentagon could have found the money to send the Truman to the Middle East, though it would have required the Navy to curtail other deployments and operations. Keeping the Truman home will save as much as $300 million, officials said.

All of the military services have spent the last month warning that they will be forced to curtail training hours and equipment maintenance for everyone other than forces in Afghanistan and South Korea. That will leave soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines not fully ready to fight if they're needed, officials warn.

But outside budget experts note that it is hard to assess the real effects of the sequester because the services have not disclosed much detail on the programs they are protecting from cuts.

"What they don't tell us is what the priorities are that they have protected," said Gordon Adams, a defense budget expert at American University who oversaw Pentagon budgeting during the Clinton administration.

The automatic budget cuts were required under a 2011 budget law, negotiated by Obama and Republican leaders, that set an across-the-board reduction in most programs if Congress failed to find other ways to trim the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the coming decade. The Pentagon faces a budget reduction of more than $40 billion through the end of September, and additional cuts would come in future years as long as the sequester remains in effect.

Each of the Pentagon's thousands of accounts — with a few exceptions including military pay and operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere — would be cut by as much as 15% in order to hold the base defense budget to $486 billion this year.

Some defense budget experts say the problem with the sequester is not the size of the cuts but the across-the-board way they are imposed, which prevents the Pentagon from cutting low-priority spending and preserving dollars for important priorities, such as military operations.

Over the last decade of two wars and constant deployments, the Pentagon has grown accustomed to ample budgets that rarely required such choices. But that era is drawing to an end.

Canceling the aircraft carrier's trip to the Middle East "is something they probably have been contemplating anyway," Todd Harrison, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Now they are trying to pin the blame on the sequester."

Obama ordered the Pentagon to keep two carriers in the Middle East in late 2011 in response to requests from top U.S. commanders, who wanted to beef up the U.S. presence amid rising tensions with Iran. But maintaining that presence became increasingly difficult after the number of deployable carriers in the fleet dropped to nine last year, Navy officials said.

Typically, three carriers are being overhauled or in training for every one that is deployed. With one permanently assigned to the Pacific, it would have been almost impossible to keep two carriers in the Middle East beyond next summer without severely stressing the force, said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the chief Navy spokesman.

Since the automatic cuts would not apply to contracts that have already been signed, most of the Pentagon weapons procurement programs would not be affected, at least initially.

But the longer the cuts remain in force, the more likely it would be that the Defense Department would have to further slow purchases of expensive weapons systems, such as the problem-plagued F-35 fighter, and cancel future weapons programs that run over budget, including Navy shipbuilding contracts and the Air Force's new KC-46 aerial refueling tanker.

Pentagon officials are asking for greater latitude to move money between accounts, but even that request faces skepticism from lawmakers worried about defending projects the Pentagon might like to cut.

"The effort is really going to focus on giving [the Defense Department] flexibility" to move money around, Harrison said.

david.cloud@latimes.com

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Secret Vatican report could play a part in pope selection

VATICAN CITY — Deep inside a safe in the papal apartment lies a top-secret report — for his holiness' eyes only — that has become the most talked-about document in Rome.

Written by three elderly cardinals, the dossier delves into the most damaging security breach in the Vatican in living memory: the recent leak of private papers belonging to Pope Benedict XVI. The pontiff commissioned the senior prelates to find out how such a major lapse could have occurred and why.

Where the fingers point — already a matter of fevered conjecture in the Italian press — could become a factor in the selection of the next pope after Benedict's retirement Thursday. Even though the 115 cardinals who will choose a new pontiff are not being allowed to read the confidential file, what they believe to be in it could color their decision.

Speculation over the dossier's potentially explosive contents is just part of the politicking that is likely to go into the heavily veiled process of picking a new leader for the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.

That process in effect started earlier than usual because of Benedict's surprise announcement of his intention to step down from office rather than let death remove him from it. The advance notice of a vacancy on the throne of St. Peter means that papal hopefuls, their supporters and detractors have already begun sizing one another up, plotting strategy and assessing chances.

As yet, no whisper campaigns or well-timed leaks to the news media have sprung up as the cardinals converge on Rome to be on hand for Benedict's farewell. But if previous papal transitions are any guide, that could just be a matter of time.

"I'm sure we'll see it," said John Allen, a veteran Vatican watcher for the National Catholic Reporter.

As spiritual and prayerful as the process is supposed to be, cardinals have been known to resort to more worldly methods of advancing their favored candidates or issues.

"They are talking with one another — not in public view, obviously," Allen said, and some also have made brief statements to journalists. "Other cardinals are reading those interviews. That's also a way to put down markers," he said.

The most crucial forum for the cardinals to do some subtle self-promotion and to evaluate one another is the group meetings they will hold to discuss issues facing the church as they prepare for the conclave to elect the new pope. The Vatican announced Tuesday that those meetings, called general congregations, would begin Monday.

Marco Tosatti, a Vatican correspondent for La Stampa newspaper, said the discussions of the church's challenges would be particularly important in determining who Benedict's successor will be.

In previous conclaves, some of the jockeying fell along doctrinal lines, between conservative and liberal camps. But the current College of Cardinals is almost entirely conservative, in the mold of the two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who appointed them, so those divisions don't apply. Instead, Tosatti said, the main focus will be on the church's priorities.

"They are still thinking [about] not the man but what are the challenges to the church. All this will come out during the general congregation," Tosatti said. "They start to gather a consensus on the issues, and only then they'll start asking the question, who's the man who can face the challenge? You choose a problem first and then the man after."

Tosatti doesn't detect too much maneuvering behind the scenes by the papabili, or "pope-ables," so far. But that is likely to change once all the cardinals have arrived in Rome.

One of the issues expected to arise is the internal workings of the Vatican, which has come under heavy scrutiny since the papal documents were leaked. The papers painted an unflattering portrait of an institution racked by turf battles and corruption at the highest levels, and suggested that Benedict was unable to curb abuses.

The pope's personal butler was arrested and convicted by a Vatican tribunal of stealing the private papers. Benedict later pardoned him and commissioned the three cardinals to investigate.

One recent Italian news report, citing anonymous sources, said the top-secret dossier on the so-called Vatileaks scandal contains revelations of a gay lobby within the Vatican, some of whose members were being blackmailed over their sexuality.

Vatican officials have labeled such reports as baseless and malicious. But that has not stopped some Vatican watchers from wondering whether some mudslinging is already underway, although no one has quite yet divined who benefits and who doesn't from the speculative accounts of the dossier's contents.

The Vatican said this week that the report, which Benedict has read, would be handed over only to his successor and not be made available to the rest of the cardinals. But the three prelates who compiled the dossier will attend the general congregation and could divulge some of its findings.

One cardinal, Jean-Louis Tauran of France, told Italy's La Repubblica newspaper that he and his fellow conclave members should be made privy to the report's findings and the identities of those named in it before deciding whom to choose as the new pontiff.

"The cardinal electors cannot decide to choose this or that name to vote for if they don't know the contents of this dossier," Tauran said. "If it's necessary, I don't see why they should not ask for names."

The Vatican did reveal the answer Tuesday to one of the most common questions surrounding Benedict and his retirement: what he will be called once he is no longer the reigning pope.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Benedict, the first pope to resign in six centuries, will bear the title "pope emeritus" or "Roman pontiff emeritus." He will keep the honorific "his holiness" and the designation Benedict XVI rather than return to being called Joseph Ratzinger.

He will also continue to be robed in white rather than reassume the black outfit worn by cardinals. But Benedict, an inveterate shoe lover, will trade in the trademark red papal shoes for a pair of handcrafted brown loafers that he spotted and liked on a visit to Mexico.

henry.chu@latimes.com

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Labor pours millions into L.A. races

Nearly $4 million in independent expenditures have poured into Los Angeles city election campaigns in recent weeks, with more than three-fourths coming from groups tied to organized labor.

Much of the debate on union spending before the March 5 vote has focused on $2.2 million — the bulk of it from police officers and Department of Water and Power workers — that is fueling the mayoral candidacy of Wendy Greuel.

But records show labor is also looking to strengthen its hand at the City Council by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on mailers, billboards and campaign ground troops to try to sway the outcome in eight of 15 council races.

SPREADSHEET: Unlimited outside money

Organized labor already wields considerable influence at City Hall, pressing the mayor and lawmakers to support employee raises and approve construction projects that create union jobs. The large number of open council seats, combined with laws that let special interests spend unlimited amounts, could leave unions with "an even stronger grip," said Jaime Regalado, emeritus professor of political science at Cal State L.A.

"L.A. is one of the few places in the country where labor plays such a dominant role, not only in selecting candidates to run, but in spending an amount of money that far outdistances whatever groups or individuals are second or third," he added.

Campaign finance laws limit mayoral candidates to accepting no more than $1,300 from any single contributor. Council candidates can't take more than $700 per donor. But special interests and wealthy individuals can spend unlimited sums as long as they do not coordinate their efforts with a candidate.

By 2 p.m. Tuesday, roughly $700,000 had been spent by independent groups on the three most competitive council contests, with two-thirds coming from labor groups.

The biggest beneficiaries of that money are Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) on the Eastside; former City Commissioner John Choi in an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district; and state Sen. Curren Price (D-Los Angeles) in South Los Angeles.

Cedillo, Choi and Price are hoping to replace termed-out council members Ed Reyes, Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry — all of whom antagonized organized labor last year by voting to roll back pension benefits for newly hired city employees.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the 600,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor — one of the big independent campaign donors — warned council members last year that the benefits rollback would "come back and haunt" them.

Durazo was unavailable for comment. But her organization said in a statement that it chose candidates based on their track records, strategy for winning and views on "living wage" jobs, affordable housing and other issues.

In Reyes' district, union groups have spent $182,000 to support Cedillo, a former organizer with Service Employees International Union. Four-fifths of the money came from the county labor federation, which opposed last year's pension reductions. The rollback, which goes into effect July 1, is expected to save taxpayers $4 billion over 30 years, according to city officials. With days left before the election, Cedillo would not say whether that vote was the right one. Instead, he suggested a new look is needed at retirement benefits for new hires.

"I want to reevaluate the entire situation," he said.

Cedillo's opponent, Jose Gardea, said the council did the right thing on pensions. The unlimited independent money — which is paying for campaign billboards across the district — should worry voters, he said. "It's an outrageous amount," said Gardea, who is Reyes' chief of staff.

Ron Gochez, who is running to replace Perry, voiced similar complaints about the South Los Angeles race, where more than $300,000 in independent money has been spent to promote Price, more than half of it from labor groups. "It's completely undemocratic," he said.

Price, who moved into Perry's district last year, said he welcomes labor support, noting that the blue-collar 9th District is filled with union members. "I'm proud to represent working people," he said.

SPREADSHEET: Unlimited outside money

In Garcetti's Hollywood-area district, union groups have spent $171,000 so far supporting Choi, who was the labor federation's economic development director from 2009 to 2011. Choi made his union ties explicit in one closed-door candidate interview, telling a large city employee group he would put them "on the inside" if they endorsed him.

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Garcetti holds potential interest in Beverly Hills oil drilling

In his bid for Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti has promoted himself as the greenest of candidates.

The city councilman from Silver Lake has pushed for an expansion of L.A.'s rooftop solar-panel program and the creation of thousands of clean-energy jobs, all to reduce the region's dependence on oil. Those positions helped Garcetti win the Sierra Club's endorsement.

Missing from Garcetti's environmental platform, however, is any hint that he has long stood to profit from a lease interest in a headline-making oil drilling operation: the wells run by Venoco Inc. at Beverly Hills High School.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

According to documents on file with the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office, Garcetti and several family members signed a 20-year lease with Venoco in 1998. It gave the company the subsurface drilling rights to a nearby Beverly Hills retail property that the councilman co-owns through a personal trust.

The lease enables Denver-based Venoco to tap oil and gas underneath the Wilshire Boulevard property by slant drilling from the high school about half a mile away.

The high school wells have been the target of some alumni, residents and environmentalists who allege the drilling has emitted dangerous levels of benzene.

Venoco insists the wells are safe and says it has taken no oil or gas from the Garcetti property in the 9600 block of Wilshire. Company spokeswoman Lisa Rivas said Venoco secured the lease in anticipation of extending its drilling to that part of Beverly Hills but does not know if the firm will follow through on the plans.

Garcetti spokesman Jeff Millman said the candidate "has no memory" of signing the lease. In response to Times queries, Millman said, Garcetti looked into the agreement and found that he earns just $1.25 from it per year.

"It's not really an issue," Millman said.

But Garcetti and several of his relatives who co-own the Wilshire property could collect royalties if Venoco began producing oil or gas from the parcel. Otherwise, they are paid nominal rental fees.

Millman said Garcetti would donate any royalties to the Sierra Club.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

Because the amount of money he has received to date is so small, Garcetti apparently has not been required to list the lease or the fees on his annual financial disclosure forms. It is unclear whether Garcetti has followed state and city disclosure rules for his ownership interest in the property.

When the lease was in its seventh year, Garcetti voted in favor of a 2005 council resolution opposing Venoco's efforts to increase its drilling offshore. At the time, he said in a statement that the ocean drilling "would harm the legacy that we're guarding for the generations that come after us," but he did not mention that he could benefit financially from Venoco's onshore wells.

Millman said the Wilshire property once housed a clothing store run by Garcetti's grandfather. It is now the site of a hair salon that pays rent to Garcetti and the relatives, including his sister and cousins, and his grandfather's trust, Millman said.

In general, state law requires disclosure of real estate holdings that are within two miles of a city office-holder's jurisdiction, said Gary Winuk, enforcement chief for the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The Beverly Hills property is within that distance of Los Angeles. For the most part, the city rules are similar to or stricter than the state's.

Garcetti specifically listed the property on his state and city forms from 2007 through 2009, reporting annual rental income from the hair salon in the broad category of between $10,000 and $100,000.

He omitted the property from the forms he filed in the years before and after that period.

Millman said Garcetti did not report it before 2007 because his advisors believed its location outside the Los Angeles city limits exempted it from disclosure.

Based on new advice, Millman said, Garcetti began reporting his interest in the property in 2007. But starting in 2010, he stopped disclosing it as a real estate holding. Instead, Garcetti listed his rental earnings from the hair salon as income from the Harry Roth Trust, named for his grandfather, believing that was the appropriate way to report the proceeds from the property, Millman said. He added that Garcetti's attorneys would review the filings to make sure they are correct.

The Sierra Club did not respond to requests for comment.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

In 2003, Venoco agreed to pay a fine and install monitoring equipment to settle pollution complaints from air quality officials. The wells were the subject of lawsuits brought that year by the firm of famed environmental advocate Erin Brockovich against Venoco and the city and school district of Beverly Hills, among others. The city and school district earn royalties from the wells.

The suits alleged that the wells had caused cancer in former students. The city and school district subsequently conducted tests that found no evidence of elevated emissions. A judge later dismissed the suits. As part of a settlement, the plaintiffs paid some of the legal fees incurred by the city and school district.

The debate over the wells died down, but the Beverly Hills City Council in 2011 adopted an anti-drilling ordinance that could stop Venoco's operations at the high school when its lease expires at the end of 2016.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

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Race for L.A. city controller heats up

A previously low-profile race for Los Angeles city controller has begun to heat up as opponents of City Councilman Dennis Zine accuse him of "double dipping" the city's payroll and question why he is considering lucrative tax breaks for a Warner Center developer.

Zine, who for 12 years has represented a district in the southeast San Fernando Valley, is the better known of the major candidates competing to replace outgoing Controller Wendy Greuel.

The others are Cary Brazeman, a marketing executive, and lawyer Ron Galperin. Zine has raised $766,000 for his campaign, more than double that of Galperin, the next-highest fundraiser, and has the backing of several of the city's powerful labor unions.

He also has been endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several of his council colleagues. Galperin is backed by the Service Employees International Union, one the city's largest labor groups, and Brazeman is supported by retired Rep. Diane Watson and several neighborhood council representatives.

With the primary ballot less than a week away, Brazeman and Galperin have turned up the heat on Zine, hoping to push the race beyond the March 5 vote. If no one wins more than 50% of the ballots cast, the top two vote-getters will face a runoff in the May general election.

In a recent debate, Zine's opponents criticized him for receiving a $100,000 annual pension for his 33 years with the Los Angeles Police Department and a nearly $180,000 council salary. Brazeman and Galperin called it an example of "double dipping" that should be eliminated.

That brought a forceful response from Zine, who shot back that he gives a big portion of his police pension check to charities.

"I am so tired of hearing 'double dipping,' " he said. "I worked 33 years on the streets of Los Angeles. I have given over $300,000 to nonprofits that need it.... That's what's happened with that pension."

In the same debate, Brazeman accused Zine of cozying up to a Warner Center developer by pushing for tax breaks on a project that already has been approved. The nearly 30-acre Village at Westfield Topanga project would add 1 million square feet of new shops, restaurants, office space and a hotel to a faded commercial district on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

"The councilman proposed to give developers at Warner Center tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks even though it's a highly successful project," he said. "He wants to give it away."

City records show that less than a month after the development was approved in February 2012, Zine asked the council for a study looking at possible "economic development incentives" that could be given to Westfield in return for speeding up street and landscaping enhancements to the project's exterior.

The motion's language notes that similar tax breaks have been awarded to large projects in the Hollywood and downtown areas, and that "similar public investment in the Valley has been lacking." Westfield is paying for the $200,000 study.

Zine defended his decision before the debate audience, saying if the study finds that the city will not benefit, no tax breaks will be awarded. "If there's nothing there, then they get nothing," Zine said.

The controller serves as a public watchdog over the city's $7.3-billion annual operation, auditing the general fund, 500 special fund accounts and the performance of city departments. Those audits often produce recommendations for reducing waste, fraud and abuse.

But the mayor and the council are not obligated to adopt those recommendations, and as a result the job is part accountant, part scolder in chief. All the candidates say they will use their elective position not only to perform audits but also to turn them into action.

Their challenge during the campaign has been explaining how they will do that.

Zine, 65, says his City Hall experience has taught him how to get things done by working with his colleagues. He won't be afraid to publicly criticize department managers, he said, but thinks collaboration works better than being combative.

"You can rant and rave and people won't work with you," he said. "Or you can sit down and talk it out, and you can accomplish things."

Galperin, 49, considers himself a policy wonk who relishes digging into the details to come up with ways to become more efficient with limited dollars and to find ways to raise revenue using the city's sprawling assets. For instance, the city owns two asphalt plants that could expand production and sell some of its material to raise money to fix potholes, he said.

He's served on two city commissions, including one that found millions of dollars in savings by detailing ways to be more efficient. Zine is positioning himself as a "tough guy for tough times," but the controller should be more than that, Galperin said.

"What we really need is some thoughtfulness and some smarts and some effectiveness," he said. "Just getting up there and saying we need to be tough is not going to accomplish what needs to be done."

Brazeman, 46, started his own marketing and public relations firm in West Los Angeles a decade ago and became active in city politics over his discontent with a development project near his home. He has pushed the council to change several initiatives over the last five years, including changes to the financing of the Farmers Field stadium proposal that will save taxpayer dollars, he said.

As controller, he would pick and choose his battles, and, Brazeman said, be "the right combination of constructive, abrasive and assertive."

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

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California braces for impending cuts from federal sequestration

California's defense industry is bracing for a $3.2-billion hit with the federal budget cuts that are expected to take effect Friday.

But myriad other federally funded programs also are threatened, and the combined effect is expected to slow the momentum that California's economy has been building over the last year.

As the state braces for pain from so-called sequestration, there are warnings of long delays at airport security checkpoints, potential slowdowns in cargo movement at harbors and cutbacks to programs, including meals for seniors and projects to combat neighborhood blight.

Despite the grim scenarios from local and state officials, economists say the cuts' overall blow to the economy would be modest, felt more acutely in regions such as defense-heavy San Diego and by Californians dependent on federal programs, such as college students who rely on work-study jobs to pay for school.

Critics say the cuts come at an inopportune time because the economic recovery in the U.S. and California is still weak.

"We need stimulus, not premature austerity," Gov. Jerry Brown said during a break at the National Governors Assn. meeting in Washington.

Rep. John Campbell (R-Irvine) contends that critics of the cuts are exaggerating the effects.

"If we can't do this, what can we do" to reduce Washington's red ink, he asked. "We ought to be panicked about the day when people won't buy our debt anymore because we borrowed too much."

If automatic spending cuts occur as planned, the growth in the country's gross domestic product is likely to slow by 0.4 percentage points this year, from about 2% to 1.6%, economists said.

California's GDP would see a similar slowdown. The state stands to lose as much as $10 billion in federal funding this year, according to Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

Levy said the more than $1 trillion in cuts planned over the next decade include "items in the federal budget that invest for the future," such as support for research and clean energy, that particularly affect California because of its "innovation economy."

The ripple effects the cuts might have on business and consumer confidence — which would further dampen economic activity — remain to be seen, said Jason Sisney, a deputy at the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

"We're at a point where gains in housing and construction markets have begun to take hold," Sisney said. "A slowdown from sequestration would come at just the moment that the economy was beginning to right itself."

Jerry Nickelsburg, a UCLA economist who writes a quarterly economic forecast on the Golden State, said the state's recent economic gains would provide a buffer against sequestration.

"California can absorb it," Nickelsburg said. "Will it slow economic growth? The answer is yes. Will it result in negative economic growth? I think the answer is no."

Los Angeles officials project that the city would lose more than $100 million at a time when they're struggling to close a hole in the city's budget.

Douglas Guthrie, chief executive of the Los Angeles city housing authority, said Monday that rent subsidies to as many as 15,000 low-income families would be cut an average $200 a month, forcing many families to search for less expensive housing. His agency also might face as many as 80 layoffs in an already reduced workforce.

But Guthrie said in a letter to the Los Angeles City Council that the housing authority must plan for the "painful consequences" of the federal budget cuts and is preparing to send warning notices to participants in the housing assistance program "as soon as we see that the cuts are made and there are no immediate prospects to resolve the budget crisis."

At Yosemite National Park, snow plowing of a key route over the Sierra would be delayed, ranger-led programs are likely to be reduced and the park would face "less frequent trash pickup, loss of campground staff, and reduced focus on food storage violations, all of which contribute to visitor safety concerns and increased bear mortality rates," according to the National Park Service.

Some programs, such as Social Security, would be spared from the $85 billion in cuts nationwide due to kick in Friday. But defense programs are expected to be cut by about 13% for the remainder of the fiscal year and domestic spending by about 9%, according to the White House budget office.

The Obama administration sought Monday to highlight the effects close to home in an effort to step up the pressure on Congress to replace across-the-board cuts with more targeted reductions and new tax revenue collected from taxpayers earning more than $1 million a year.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is bracing for a loss of $37 million a year in federal funding. Supt. John Deasy said Monday that he is sending a letter to the California congressional delegation warning about the "potential very grave impact" of the cuts on Los Angeles schools.

Rachelle Pastor Arizmendi, director of early childhood education at the Pacific Asian Consortium for Employment in Los Angeles, said she anticipated that the cuts would cost her agency $980,000 in federal Head Start funding. That would force PACE to eliminate preschool for about 120 children ages 3 to 5.

"It's not just a number," she said. "This is closing down classrooms. This is putting our children behind when they're going to kindergarten."

The nonprofit serves about 2,000 children, providing most of them two meals a day in addition to preschool education. The cuts would mean PACE would have to lay off four of its 20 teachers, forcing the closure of eight Head Start classrooms, Arizmendi said.

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

richard.simon@latimes.com

Lopez reported from Los Angeles and Simon from Washington. Times staff writer Jim Puzzanghera in Washington contributed to this report.

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Bill would bar some athletes from California workers' comp claims

SACRAMENTO — Players for professional sports teams based outside of California would be barred from filing compensation claims for job-related injuries under proposed legislation supported by owners of football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer franchises.

A bill unveiled Monday by Assembly Insurance Committee Chairman Henry Perea (D-Fresno) would ban retired athletes from seeking workers' compensation benefits from California courts after they've played relatively few games in California stadiums and arenas during their careers.

The proposal, AB 1309, is expected to be one of the most hotly debated issues of the legislative session, with team owners lining up against the players' unions and their labor allies.

The bill, said Perea, is expected to be a "starting point" for a lively legislative debate over whether claims from out-of-state retired players represent abuse of the California workers' compensation system and wind up hitting all California employers with higher premiums and surcharges that pay for outstanding claims left by failed insurance companies.

"It's a question of fairness," Perea said.

Workers' compensation is 100% employer funded and does not depend on taxpayers' support.

The cost argument is phony, countered Richard Berthelsen, a consulting lawyer with the National Football League Players Assn. A prorated share of a team's workers' compensation bill is calculated into athletes' salary caps, so, in effect, they're paying for their own insurance coverage, Berthelsen contended. "They pay for their own benefits," he said.

Perea's bill would affect professional athletes from only the five big sports and not members of other professions whose work takes them from state to state, such as horse racing jockeys, truck drivers and salesmen. It would bar the filing of claims for cumulative trauma — caused by years of stress and pounding on a body rather than a broken bone or other specific injury — unless a player worked at least 90 days in California during the year prior to seeking benefits.

California is the only state that makes it relatively easy for long-retired players to claim cumulative trauma injuries. About 4,500 out-of-state players have won judgments or settlements since the early 1980s, according to a study commissioned by the professional sports leagues.

The bill, if it should become law, would apply to thousands of out-of-state athletes' claims currently pending before California workers' compensation judges.

Perea's legislation, by restricting benefits only for professional athletes, is potentially unfair, labor officials argued.

Regardless of whether they play for out-of-state teams, said Angie Wei, legislative director of the California Labor Federation, "these players are workers and they deserve to have access to their benefits. They work for short durations of time at an intense level and get injured."

marc.lifsher@latimes.com

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Despite stumbles, Baca named 'Sheriff of Year' by national group

For Sheriff Lee Baca, the last couple years have been rough.

His department is being investigated by the feds. A county commission examining abuse in Baca's jails found him to be disengaged and uninformed, saying he probably would have been fired in the private sector. Secret deputy cliques with gang-like hand signs and matching tattoos have surfaced. And Baca has been accused of using his office for the benefit of friends, relatives and donors.

Despite those challenges, Baca has been awarded "Sheriff of the Year" by the National Sheriffs' Assn.

His spokesman said the honor was appropriate given Baca is "the most progressive sheriff in the nation" and "a guy that works seven days a week."

"This is his best year because people do their best when they face their biggest challenges and he is excelling," said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Baca's critics disagreed.

"You gotta be kidding," said Peter Eliasberg, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California. "The years of malfeasance in the jails and the blatant failure of the sheriff to address the problems make his winning this award mind-boggling."

The association that picked Baca represents most of the sheriffs across the nation, with about 2,700 sheriffs as members, a spokesman said. About ten sheriffs were nominated for the award. A panel of former winners, current sheriffs and corporate sponsors chose Baca after reviewing the applications submitted for him and other nominees.

"It looks at what the sheriff has done in their own community but also what the sheriff has done to advance the office of sheriff nationally," said Fred Wilson, director of operations for the association. "Sheriff Baca certainly embodies that. He is an exemplary sheriff."

In announcing the award, the association cited Baca's record for providing educational opportunities for jail inmates and his efforts to reach out to various religious groups in the community. It also noted the vast size of the Sheriff's Department and the relatively low crime rates in the areas the department patrols.

"He commands the largest Sheriff's Office in the United States with a budget of $2.5 billion," the association wrote. "He leads nearly 18,000 sworn and professional staff ... the law enforcement providers for forty-two incorporated cities, 140 unincorporated communities, nine community colleges, and thousands of Metropolitan Transit Authority and Rapid Rail Transit District commuters."

Wilson said that although members of the panel focused on the application materials for each candidate, they were free to do their own research.

The recent headlines they would have found about Baca have not been flattering.

Current and former sheriff's supervisors went public with accounts of mismanagement. In addition to the FBI investigation of his jails, federal authorities launched a probe into allegations that Baca's deputies harassed minorities in the Antelope Valley and another investigation into one of Baca's captains, who was accused of helping an alleged drug trafficker.

Baca's department attracted more scrutiny following disclosures of a secret clique of elite gang deputies who sported matching tattoos and allegedly celebrated shootings. The sheriff has also been under fire for giving special treatment to friends and supporters, including launching "special" criminal investigations on behalf of two contributors. Although the homicide rate is at a historic low, recently released sheriff's statistics show serious crime increased 4.2% last year and all types of crime jumped 3%.

Most recently, The Times reported that Baca's nephew was hired to be a deputy despite a checkered past, and is now being investigated for allegedly abusing an inmate.

Last year, the sheriff announced a sweeping jail reform plan aimed at curbing abuses and improving accountability. An attorney monitoring Baca's progress for the county has given him high marks so far.

"Sheriff Baca doesn't step down, he steps up," Whitmore added.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

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Mike Piazza softens stance on Dodgers' Vin Scully

PHOENIX—

— Calling Vin Scully "a class act" and saying he had "the utmost respect" for him, Mike Piazza on Monday defended what he wrote in his recently released autobiography about the Hall of Fame broadcaster.

In his book, "Long Shot," Piazza described Scully as instrumental in turning the fans of Los Angeles against him during the contract stalemate that led to his trade to the Florida Marlins in 1998. Piazza wrote that Scully "was crushing me" on the air, a charge Scully vehemently denied.

"I can't say that I have regrets," Piazza said. "I was just trying to explain the situation."

The former All-Star catcher was at the Dodgers' spring-training facility with Italy's World Baseball Classic team, for which he is a coach. Scully was also at the complex, to call the Dodgers' 7-6 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

"I'd love to see him," Piazza said.

The two didn't meet.

"I always liked him," Scully said. "I admired him. I think either he made a mistake or got some bad advice. I still think of him as a great player and I hope he gets into the Hall of Fame. I really do. Whatever disappointment I feel, I'll put aside."

Scully declined to comment further on Piazza or his book.

Piazza complimented Scully as he tried to defend what he wrote.

"Vin is a class act; he's an icon," Piazza said. "To this day, I have the utmost respect for him. But the problem is, you have to go back in time and understand that at that point in time in my career with the Dodgers was a very tumultuous time. I was more or less telling my version of the story, at least what I was experiencing. And I said at the end of the book, it's not coming from a place of malice or anger. I think anybody who remembers that time knows it was a very tumultuous time."

Piazza said his intent wasn't to blame Scully.

"I don't think anybody who read the passage from start to finish felt that way," Piazza said. "Anybody who reads it knows it wasn't me blaming. That was definitely not the only factor. There were other factors. The team made the mistake, I made the mistake, of speaking publicly."

Piazza acknowledged that he never heard Scully's broadcasts and that his impressions of them were based on what he heard from others.

"My perception was that he was given the Dodgers' versions of the negotiations, which, I feel, wasn't 100% accurate," Piazza said.

In his book, Piazza also took issue with how Scully asked him about his contract demands during a spring-training interview. Piazza said Monday that he was "taken aback" by the line of questioning because he previously hadn't talked publicly about the negotiations.

To reach the practice fields at Camelback Ranch on Monday, Piazza had to pass through a gantlet of Dodgers fans. Piazza said he wasn't nervous.

"I did a book signing a couple of weeks ago in Pasadena and the fans were really nice," he said.

Piazza denied that he hadn't returned to Dodger Stadium in recent years out of fear of being booed, as Tom Lasorda told The Times last month.

Piazza said he always associated the Dodgers with the O'Malley family, which sold the team to News Corp. in 1998.

"Since then, obviously, they've taken on a different identity," Piazza said.

Piazza was noncommittal about visiting the ballpark in the future. "We'll see," he said. "I'll never say never."

Wouldn't it be harder to return now that his portrayal of Scully has upset fans?

"I don't know," he said. "I can't answer that."

Piazza also spoke about falling short of being elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

"I definitely couldn't lie and say I wasn't a little disappointed," he said.

He is hopeful he will one day be inducted. "I trust the process," he said.

Piazza wouldn't say whether he thought Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens deserved to be in the Hall of Fame. Both players, who have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs, also were denied election.

Piazza has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has never faced detailed allegations that he did. Asked if he was upset that the indiscretions of others might have altered others' perceptions of him, he replied, "Unfortunately, that's the way life is sometimes. I can't control and worry about what people think."

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com

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Gaza militants break cease-fire with rocket attack into Israel

Israeli police remove the remains of a rocket in the town of Ashkelon. (EPA / February 26, 2013)

By Edmund Sanders

February 26, 2013, 12:05 a.m.

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian unrest spread Tuesday to the Gaza Strip, where militants fired a rocket into southern Israel, shattering one of the longest periods of quiet along that border in recent memory.

It was the first rocket fired since the signing of a November cease-fire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, ending their eight-day clash.

The morning attack came as Palestinians in the West Bank protest the death of 30-year-old Arafat Jaradat, a gas station attendant who died suddenly in Israeli custody after being arrested for throwing rocks at an Israeli settler.

Palestinians claim Jaradat was tortured to death. Israelis say the exact cause of his Feb. 23 death has not yet been determined.

The Grad rocket fired early Tuesday landed in an open area near the Israeli city of Ashkelon, causing no damage or injuries.

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The evolving views of Kevin James

First in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls.

If it weren't for paparazzi shooting topless photographs of actress Jennifer Aniston, Kevin James might never have become a talk radio show host — or gone on to run for mayor of Los Angeles.

In an only-in-Hollywood tale, James got his first taste of talk radio in 2002, when he was representing Aniston and then-husband Brad Pitt in a lawsuit against adult magazine publishers who had run the racy photos. When the case settled, he was invited on KABC-AM (790) in Los Angeles to talk about it.

Immediately hooked, James over the next decade found himself doing more radio and less lawyering for Lavely & Singer, one of the city's top entertainment law firms. Then, last year, he traded his radio mic for the mayoral campaign.

"I call it my prior life,'' James said of his entertainment law days, recounting how he once escorted Farrah Fawcett to an awards show.

"I used to go to lots of movie premieres.... Now I go to lots of debates."

On the campaign trail, he has become the crowd-pleasing populist, thundering about corruption at City Hall and emphasizing his outsider status. But his record shows there are two Kevin Jameses: the conservative radio host on one hand and the far more moderate mayoral candidate on the other.

His positions today on key issues such as the environment, immigration and President Obama are at odds with his statements in the past.

In a recent televised debate on KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles, for instance, he lambasted his opponents for not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gases in the city — a signature issue for environmentalists who link an increase in carbon emissions with global climate change.

He accused fellow candidates Controller Wendy Greuel and council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry of failing to develop a "comprehensive environmental sustainability plan" during their years at City Hall. "We haven't made the progress that we should have made with current leadership,'' he said.

As recently as five years ago, however, James appeared to reject the entire idea of global warming. As a conservative talk show host, he wrote a column in Townhall.com calling Democrats "global warming wimps" who are exploiting the issue for political gain. The phrase "carbon footprint," he wrote, "is code for limitless government intrusion into every detail of your life. Nothing is beyond the reach of a government determined to reduce your carbon footprint in the name of the environment. To these people, nothing is sacred, nothing is private, nothing is truly yours."

His statements at that time could be incendiary. In a Townhall.com column in 2009, he wrote that Obama should choose Daffy Duck, the Warner Bros.' cartoon character, as his Supreme Court pick to replace the retiring David Souter. The reasons he cited: The duck is black, disabled (with a speech impediment) and a "professional victim."

In an on-air quarrel with MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, James suggested that then-candidate Barack Obama was a foreign-policy appeaser comparable to Neville Chamberlain, the former British prime minister who made a deal with Adolf Hitler in an attempt to avoid war.

"You're BS-ing me," Matthews chided James, noting later that there is a difference between talks and appeasement, which involves making concessions to potential aggressors. "This is pathetic. He doesn't even know what Chamberlain did at Munich.... We're talking to people with blank slates about history."

Also in his radio days, James urged tea party supporters to reject any new taxes, voiced support for a juvenile death penalty and supported a 700-mile fence on the nation's southern border.

Even in recent years, he consistently opposed Democratic proposals for a "path to citizenship" — an issue of intense interest to Los Angeles' heavily Latino electorate.

James says he now supports naturalization for immigrants who have been here at least a decade. He also backs California's version of the Dream Act, which guarantees access to college for students who have lived here most of their lives. His change of heart came about after participating in immigrant workshops and learning how difficult it can be to gain citizenship, he said.

"People come from all over the world and want to contribute to our society, and I want to help them,'' he said. "However, it has to be fair and equitable."

After studying accounting at the University of Oklahoma, James earned a law degree in Houston and took a job in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles from 1990 to 1993, when he left to join entertainment lawyer Bert Fields. In 1992, he received a Director's Award for superior performance from the U.S. Department of Justice.

After the Aniston case, he started filling in at KABC-AM as a legal analyst and later took over a morning drive-time slot at KTOK-AM (1000) in Oklahoma — the state's biggest talk-show station.

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Tough challenges lie ahead for college trustees

The Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees faces a host of immediate and pressing issues this spring, chief among them: the selection of a new chancellor, budget uncertainty and increasing pressure to move struggling students more quickly through the two-year schools.

Nine candidates are vying for three seats on the board in the March 5 election. One incumbent, Nancy Pearlman, is seeking to retain Seat 6, while Tina Park in Seat 2 and Kelly Candaele in Seat 4 did not seek reelection.

The nine-campus Los Angeles district is the nation's largest, with an overall annual budget of $3.5 billion and 240,000 students. The prospect of at least two and potentially three new trustees comes at a pivotal moment, with Chancellor Daniel LaVista last week announcing his resignation, effective June 30, the day before a new term begins.

The state's community colleges are under pressure to increase course offerings, improve outcomes for the tens of thousands of students lingering in remedial math and English classes, begin more aggressive online education and find ways to allow students to graduate or transfer to four-year schools more efficiently. Trustees must also set a course to increase revenue and deal with continued state funding challenges.

Candidates for the three seats largely are interested in improving the schools' finances, but they have few proposals for aggressively turning around the massive two-year system.

The Los Angeles college system should make better use of its political muscle to influence the governor and Legislature for increased funding, said Mike Eng, a former Monterey Park Democratic assemblyman who is running for Seat 2 against challenger John C. Burke, a retired accounting instructor at Los Angeles Valley College.

Eng, who served on the Assembly's Education Committee, said acquiring additional money depends on establishing performance standards for campuses to increase student success rates.

"The governor and the Legislature are going to want to know how many classes we added, how many additional students did we accommodate and how many of these students got certificates or graduated," said Eng, 66, who has collected about $193,688 in cash and other contributions through the Feb. 16 filing period and is being supported by faculty unions and the local Democratic Party.

Burke, 68, who teaches part time, also wants to focus on accountability but by improving teacher training and basing funding on completion of courses rather than on enrollment, which he said would free up funds for more classes. He listed no contributions and said he was using his pension to finance his campaign.

Burke's funding formula is similar to one included in Gov. Jerry Brown's recent budget plan. It was among a slate of measures Brown proposed to improve graduation rates as the state's 72 college districts struggle to overcome deep funding cuts, slashed class schedules and plunging enrollment.

Most of the candidates were more cautious about some of Brown's other proposals, such as moving toward more online learning, but agreed that the Los Angeles board should focus more on students after a bruising period of controversy stemming from oversight of the system's $6-billion campus rebuilding program, which has been investigated for mismanagement and wasteful spending.

In addition, two campuses — Harbor and Southwest — were placed on probation after evaluations last year by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges found deficiencies in several academic and administrative areas. West Los Angeles College received a warning.

Pearlman, 64, a trustee since 2001, said ensuring that colleges remain accredited would be a priority, as would working with K-12 educators to improve college readiness and reduce remedial demands. Pearlman listed about $12,400 in campaign contributions, including money from district contractors.

One of her challengers, Tom Oliver, said the probation decisions reflected poorly on the current board's governance. Oliver, 67, past president of the Pierce and Mission campuses, said he would add more class sections and consider proposing that some students pay the full cost of instruction for high-demand courses to increase revenue — a highly controversial plan.

He has raised about $15,000, mostly in small donations from family and friends, he said.

David Vela, 37, another challenger, said he would boost orientation and counseling for remedial students. He would achieve some savings, he said, by thinning administrative positions and reining in perks such as car allowances; he also suggested that the district should apply for more federal and foundation grants.

"We have to increase classes for students so that they're not waiting in lines for three years," said Vela, a member of the Montebello Unified School Board. He has accepted about $178,000 in cash and non-cash contributions and is also supported by labor and faculty unions and the local Democratic Party.

Also contesting Pearlman is Michael Aldapa, a community organizer running a self-financed campaign. Aldapa, 47, a Boyle Heights resident, said he would direct more district resources to improving vocational education and services for veterans and disabled students.

In the contest for Seat 4, former East Los Angeles College president Ernest Henry Moreno and Valley Glen businessman Jozef Thomas Essavi both cited the need for increased counseling and workforce training as key issues. Essavi, 38, who also ran for a board seat in 2011, said state funding formulas shortchange the huge Los Angeles district and said he would lobby Sacramento for changes, as well as look to restructure employee pensions. He has raised about $5,000 in contributions.

Moreno, 66, also a former president of Mission College, said the district can make more efficient use of its current resources and that he would seek to reduce bureaucracy. Moreno listed nearly $55,000 in contributions to date, including money from several contracting and engineering firms that have done business with the district.

Write-in candidate Margie Recana, 55, an education consultant, is running a self-financed campaign for Seat 4, touting her outsider status and experience with both public and private education.

The seven trustees are elected at large for four-year terms and get paid $2,000 a month based on meeting attendance. The board typically meets twice a month.

carla.rivera@latimes.com

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Couple killed by Dorner remembered for selflessness and love of basketball

On the same Concordia University campus where they met and fell in love, friends and family of Monica Quan and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, remembered the young couple Sunday for their humility, selflessness and love of basketball.

Helped to the podium by family, Lawrence's younger brother, Kris, whispered, "I can do this, I can do this" as he struggled against tears to pay tribute to the protective older brother who he said always did the right thing and comforted him as a child when he was scared of the dark.

"His patience grew so large because of me," Lawrence said at the memorial service for the couple.

Marcia Foster, head coach of Cal State Fullerton's women's basketball team, said Quan, 28, was an assistant who inspired her players to be more competitive and better people.

"Breathing in and out is hard right now," Foster said. "I've been through a lot in my life but nothing has shaken me as much as this."

The couple were the first victims of former Los Angeles police Officer Christopher Dorner, whose violent rampage also resulted in the shooting deaths of a Riverside police officer and a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy. Dorner later took his own life.

Police said Quan was targeted because Dorner apparently believed that her father, Randal Quan, a former captain with the Los Angeles Police Department, did not fairly represent Dorner at a hearing over his firing in 2009.

In a Facebook post that authorities have described as his manifesto, Dorner warned the elder Quan that "suppressing the truth will lead to deadly consequences for you and your family."

Monica Quan and Lawrence, 27, were recently engaged and had yet to pick a date for their wedding when they were found shot to death in their car Feb. 3 in the parking structure of their Irvine condominium complex.

On Sunday, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined more than 1,000 family, friends and law enforcement officers at the memorial service in the school's gymnasium. An overflow room was added to accommodate the crowd.

"This is where they fell in love," said Ken Amman, head coach of the school's men's basketball team where Lawrence was a player. "Basketball revealed the people they were."

In Lawrence's case, it revealed a player who stood up for the little guy and always remained cool-headed.

"Have you ever met anyone more poised inside a stressful situation?" Amman asked.

Chris Merriweather, Lawrence's close friend, said that "whenever I was around Keith, I wanted to act better and make better decisions."

Merriweather remembered Lawrence as an aggressive point guard who often overpowered his opponents on the court, yet he always picked the weakest players for a pickup game. "He never left anyone behind," Merriweather said.

As a public safety officer at USC, Lawrence impressed his superiors with his professionalism.

"Keith showed an awareness for the essence of what this job is about," said John Thomas, chief of USC's Police Department, who noted that Lawrence was less interested in putting people in jail and more inclined to focus on safety education with an ability to speak with people from all walks of life.

But conversations with Lawrence, around the department, on radio calls or in conversations with his superiors, often turned to Quan, Thomas joked.

Quan was a scrappy basketball player who was only 5 feet 3 but overpowered opponents with her three-point shot and a karate swipe that disarmed anyone trying to take the ball away.

"She was tough, she was determined, and she was hard-nosed," said Tuonisia Turner, her former coach at Cal State Long Beach.

As a child, Quan was always trying to best her brother and would shoot the ball late into the night, her father recalled.

"She was competitive when she was 4 years old," Randal Quan said.

When she graduated from college, she rose quickly in the coaching ranks at Cal Lutheran University and Cal State Fullerton.

"In 10 minutes, I knew I had found a star," said Roy Dow, head coach of the women's basketball team at Cal Lutheran.

But despite Quan and Lawrence's successes, speakers said they remained focused on the needs of others.

"Humility was just part of these kids' character," said Sandy Jo MacArthur, a family friend and an LAPD assistant chief. "Our future is good because of people like Keith and Monica."

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

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Airlines get early jump on fare hikes in 2013

When a trade group for corporate travel managers recently predicted airfares would rise in 2013, the group probably didn't expect the hikes to be launched so quickly.

Domestic airfares are expected to jump 4.6% in 2013, while international rates will probably rise 8.3%, according to a survey of travel managers by the GBTA Foundation, an arm of the Global Business Travel Assn.

The group attributed the increase to rising demand from companies ready to take advantage of new business opportunities in a strengthening economy.

Only a week after the group issued its prediction, Delta Air Lines Inc., the nation's second-largest air carrier, initiated a fare hike of $4 to $10, specifically designed to hit business travelers who book within seven days of their flight.

By the end of last week, every major carrier had matched Delta's increase, according to FareCompare, a website that keeps track of such hikes. JetBlue Airways Corp. expanded the hike to include flights booked beyond the seven-day period.

The increase is the first of 2013 to take hold.

If the past is any indication, expect to see new hikes every two months or so. In 2012, the nation's major airlines adopted seven hikes out of 15 attempts.

For hotel guests, water pressure is key concern

Despite all the money and effort hotels put into selecting comfortable beds and soft pillows, a new study suggests that hotel guests are more likely to choose a hotel based on the water pressure in the shower.

A Boston marketing and public relations company has analyzed what people say about hotels by studying more than 18,000 online conversations for a six-month period on various social websites, blogs and forums.

The company, Brodeur Partners, used for the first time what it calls "conversational relevance" to measure how much people talk about a hotel and how much of it is positive.

What do they say?

When it came to positive overall comments, the Hilton, Marriott and Four Seasons hotel chains got the highest scores in the study.

Conversations about the rooms centered around the size, followed by discussions about connectivity and technology, the study found. When guests had conversations about what they like to see or feel in the room, most of the talk was about the shower, specifically the water pressure, surpassing talk about the bed or the sheets.

Jerry Johnson, head of planning for Brodeur Partners, said the advantage of analyzing online conversations is that "you are measuring behavior. You are hearing real honest conversations."

Hotels, he said, may respond to the study by improving whatever hotel feature guests are saying is lacking, perhaps even installing new shower heads.

Hotel chain responds to online reviews

About three years ago, the economy hotel chain Red Roof Inn tested out a new in-room feature in its Columbus, Ohio, hotel.

In addition to installing outlets near the desks in the rooms, the hotel added several outlets on the nightstand so travelers could keep their portable devices charging near the bed.

By monitoring comments on the travel review website TripAdvisor, the hotel chain found that the extra plugs were a big hit with travelers. The hotel decided to install them throughout the chain.

"It's a simple thing but it's extremely meaningful to the traveler," hotel chain President Andy Alexander said.

For the third year in a row, Red Roof Inn recently earned the highest customer satisfaction score among economy hotels in an analysis by Market Metrix, a San Francisco Bay Area hotel market research company.

Alexander attributes the chain's high score to its efforts to follow and respond to online reviews.

It's because of guest comments, he said, that Red Roof has tried other improvements, such as installing wood floors in the rooms and vessel sinks in the bathrooms.

What's next? Alexander said the hotel chain offers free wireless Internet to all guests but might consider offering higher speed Wi-Fi to members of its loyalty program.

"You can't stand still," he said.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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Oscars 2013: An 'Argo' night at Academy Awards

For the second straight year, the movie business fell for itself.

"Argo" — in which a Hollywood producer and makeup artist help engineer the rescue of six Americans from Iran — won the top prize at the 85th Academy Awards, one year after the silent film story "The Artist" took the best picture Oscar.

"I never thought I'd be back here. And I am," producer-director Ben Affleck said in accepting the best picture trophy Sunday night, 15 years after he won an original screenplay Oscar for "Good Will Hunting" and then saw his career fall into a tailspin that included "Gigli" and "Daredevil."

FULL COVERAGE: Oscars 2013 | Winners

"It doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life. That's going to happen," said Affleck, who wasn't nominated for directing "Argo," one of nine films in the best picture race. "All that matters is that you've got to get up."

"Argo," which became the first movie to win best picture without its director being nominated since 1989's "Driving Miss Daisy," collected two other Academy Awards, for editing and adapted screenplay. But it was not the evening's most recognized film: That honor went to Ang Lee's "Life of Pi," which won four Oscars — for directing, visual effects, cinematography and score.

"Thank you, movie god," said Lee, whose movie came into the evening with 11 nominations, one behind Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln." The film about the 16th president helped Daniel Day-Lewis make movie history, as he became the only man to ever win three lead actor statuettes. "Lincoln" won one other prize, for production design.

The song-and-dance heavy ceremony, hosted by Seth MacFarlane, hewed closely to a traditional awards show script, but there were several surprises. First Lady Michelle Obama, who joined the ABC telecast from the White House, announced "Argo" as the best picture. And the ceremony featured only the sixth tie in Oscar history and the first since 1994, with the sound editing award split between "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Skyfall." For the first time in Oscar history, six best picture nominees were $100-million blockbusters.

The ceremony was billed as a tribute to music in film, and boasted a number of extravagant musical numbers — including a medley of songs from movie musicals and an appearance by Barbra Streisand, who sang "The Way We Were." The telecast also paid homage to the long running James Bond series, with Adele singing the theme from "Skyfall" and Dame Shirley Bassey performing the theme from 1964's "Goldfinger."

Oscars 2013: Nominee list | Red carpet | Highlights

Jennifer Lawrence, 22, nabbed the lead actress prize for her role as an emotionally unstable widow in "Silver Linings Playbook" — and promptly tripped over her long dress walking up the stairs to accept her statuette. The crowd quickly gave her a standing ovation. "You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that's embarrassing," Lawrence said to the applauding crowd at the Dolby Theatre.

The evening's very first award — for supporting actor — was a shocker, with long shot Christoph Waltz winning for his role as bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" over favored contenders Robert De Niro ("Silver Linings Playbook") and Tommy Lee Jones ("Lincoln"). Waltz, who won the same award three years ago for Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," dedicated his prize to his writer-director, who also won the Oscar for original screenplay. "We participated in a hero's journey — the hero being Quentin," Waltz said.

Tarantino pulled off a mild surprise with the screenplay triumph for his slave-revenge tale. He dedicated his award to his eclectic cast of actors. "I actually think if people know my movies 30-50 years from now it's because of the characters I create," Tarantino said.

Anne Hathaway's supporting actress win for her emotionally raw portrayal of a doomed seamstress in "Les Misérables" was hardly as startling. The 30-year-old had been the odds-on favorite to win since the film first screened for members of the Motion Picture Academy in late November. "It came true," she stage-whispered as she picked up her trophy for her performance, the centerpiece of which is the lament "I Dreamed a Dream."

Oscars 2013: Backstage | Quotes | Best & Worst moments

Some of the evening's wins were bittersweet.

The animated feature Oscar was shared by "Brave" directors Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, an unusual pairing given that Chapman was fired from the Pixar Animation Studios film and replaced by Andrews in the middle of production. "Making these are a struggle — it's a battle, it's a war," Andrews said backstage. "I was very happy it was him who took my place," Chapman said.

Rhythm & Hues Studios, the company behind "Life of Pi's" visual effects win, recently filed for bankruptcy and laid off hundreds of its employees. As Oscar winner Bill Westenhofer addressed the situation in his acceptance speech, he ran over time and the theme from "Jaws" began to play him off the stage. His microphone was cut off just as he said the words "I urge you all…"

William Goldenberg was a double nominee in the film editing category — he worked on both "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" — and won the prize for Affleck's CIA drama.

"Working at my father's deli, I had to do a million things at one time," Goldenberg said backstage about the best training for his job. "It really does prepare you for the multitasking it takes to be in an editing room."

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