San Diego mayor leaves office with his legacy intact

SAN DIEGO — On his last full day as mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders did something Sunday that took him back four decades.

He rode with a police officer assigned to the 2 p.m. to midnight shift patrolling downtown. In the mid-1970s, fresh out of San Diego State, Sanders was a rookie officer assigned to that same beat.

"I came in in a police car, I'm going out in a police car," Sanders, 62, had said with a laugh last week as he stood outside one of his signature achievements of his seven years as mayor: a new central library under construction.

A Republican in a city where Democrats hold a voter-registration edge and control the City Council, Sanders, who rose from beat cop to chief in his 26 years at the Police Department, has governed through relentless attempts at consensus and a deceptively low-key style that leans on sharing credit whenever possible.

Ask about the library project and Sanders says, "The library commission wouldn't take no for an answer."

Ask about his role in calming civic nerves during the 2007 wildfire that raged for days and destroyed hundreds of homes — a mayoral effort that led the local newspaper to compare him favorably to Rudy Giuliani after 9/11 — and Sanders mentions the help provided by two county supervisors.

Ask about his management style and he says he prefers to hire good people and then stay out of their way, but some who have worked with him point out that he watches even tiny details of important efforts.

Outside San Diego, Sanders may be remembered best for breaking with the GOP to endorse same-sex marriage, explaining that his daughter, a lesbian, should be free to marry someone she loves. He then campaigned against Proposition 8 and later went to Washington to join other — mostly Democratic — mayors to lobby Congress to repeal a law that defines marriage as between a man and woman.

In San Diego, his legacy includes guiding the city back from the precipice of its worst financial debacle in history through a series of politically controversial cutbacks in city services and then hard bargaining with labor unions that led to a salary freeze, reduction in health benefits for retirees, increased payments by employees to the pension fund and the end to guaranteed-benefit pensions for new hires.

Although the city's financial future, like that of other cities, remains uncertain, San Diego appears to be ahead of other cities, including Los Angeles, in dealing with the common problem of spiraling pension deficits.

"He did steady the local ship of state," said Steve Erie, political science professor at UC San Diego. "Whether he actually turned it around is another question."

Sanders lists the new library, the planned expansion of the waterfront convention center and the plan to remodel the core of Balboa Park as among his proudest achievements. All three faced opposition; the convention center and park plans are being fought in court.

"This isn't a hard city to govern," he said, "but it's very hard to get consensus."

One of his disappointments is the failure to put together a project to build a new stadium for the San Diego Chargers and keep the NFL franchise from leaving the city.

The Chargers issue, in which the public wants the team to remain in San Diego but does not want to spend public money for a stadium, will now be left to Sanders' successor, Bob Filner, 70, a Democrat who left a safe seat in Congress to run to replace the termed-out Sanders. Filner will be sworn into office Monday.

Although he was reelected easily in 2008, voters in 2010 turned down his request for a half-cent boost in the sales tax, which Sanders said was desperately needed to avoid additional cuts in city services. "We gave voters the opportunity," he said.

In style, Filner and Sanders are opposites: Filner is confrontational; Sanders usually isn't. Sanders appears without ego; Filner is different.

"I tell Bob that he's the most obnoxious individual I've met and that's what I like about him," Sanders said.

Lest anyone think of him as a rhetorical milquetoast, it bears remembering that, during the 2008 reelection campaign, he turned to an opponent and directed a two-word obscenity at him.

Sanders was an anomaly as a politician when he was elected in 2005 to replace Dick Murphy, who resigned amid criticism over the pension deficit. Sanders had never before run for public office, although he was a well-known public figure after six years as the highly regarded police chief.

As chief, he expanded the city's "community oriented policing" style that emphasized close collaboration between the police and neighborhood groups.

Retiring from the city in 1999, he served as chief executive of the local United Way and as president of the local Red Cross chapter — arriving when both organizations were beset by personnel turmoil and financial problems.

Sanders and his wife, Rana Sampson, will soon depart for a long-delayed vacation to Italy. Sampson retired Friday as vice president for development and marketing for the San Diego Center for Children, which provides educational and mental health services for at-risk youth.

Upon the couple's return to San Diego, Sanders will become president and chief executive of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

But first was that final shift as a beat cop downtown, asking people what help they need and providing a reassuring presence that says San Diego is a good place to live.

"Best job I ever had," Sanders said.

tony.perry@latimes.com

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IHT Rendezvous: Another 'nail house' in China gets hammered

HONG KONG — A renowned “nail house” in eastern China was finally hammered to the ground on Saturday, as the authorities demolished the house that was sitting smack dab in the middle of a new roadway.

The duck farmers who owned the five-story house, Luo Baogen and his wife, had refused to sell when local officials began buying up property in 2008 for a new highway in Zhejiang Province. More than 450 homeowners in the neighborhood took the government’s relocation offer, reportedly about $35,000 each.

But Mr. Luo resisted, even as construction began last year. The road, leading to a new train station outside the city of Wenling, was completed anyway — completely encircling the Luo house in a strange, bulging loop of tarmac.

Homes like Mr. Luo’s are known in China as nail houses “because such buildings stick out and are difficult to remove, like a stubborn nail,” according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

His refusal to move became something of a cause célèbre in China, especially on social media, and he was seen as a symbol of resistance to government land grabs, illegal midnight demolitions and rapacious development.

Mr. Luo’s home still had electricity and water, unlike other nail houses whose owners usually relent when their utilities are cut off.

Late last week, however, the couple agreed to move, accepting about $42,000 and a plot of ground for a new house, Xinhua said. New reports said Mr. Luo, 67, had originally put the value of his house at 600,000 renminbi, or about $96,000.

There was no clear or immediate explanation of why he gave in, although Xinhua quoted him as saying, “It was never a final solution for us to live in a lone house in the middle of the road. After the government’s explanations, I finally decided to move.”

Another Chinese nail house, in the sprawling city of Chongqing, drew nationwide attention in 2007 when its owner, a plucky woman named Wu Ping, refused to surrender her house for a new commercial development.

She was the lone holdout among 280 homeowners, and her husband, Yang Wu, stayed in the house as excavation went on around him. Their house eventually came to sit atop a free-standing mesa of land, and Mr. Yang was essentially marooned up there.

Ms. Wu brought him food, water and propane, which he hauled up on ropes, and he defiantly flew a Chinese flag above the house. Five stories below, Ms. Wu gave impassioned interviews and staged impromptu news conferences.

As my former colleague Howard W. French Jr. reported at the time, Ms. Wu’s defiance struck the same sort of nerve as Mr. Luo has:

It has a universal resonance in a country where rich developers are seen to be in cahoots with politicians and where both enjoy unchallenged sway. Each year, China is roiled by tens of thousands of riots and demonstrations, and few issues pack as much emotional force as the discontent of people who are suddenly uprooted, told that they must make way for a new skyscraper or golf course or industrial zone.

What drove interest in the Chongqing case was the uncanny ability of the homeowner to hold out for so long. Stories are legion in Chinese cities of the arrest or even beating of people who protest too vigorously against their eviction and relocation. In one often-heard twist, holdouts are summoned to the local police station and return home only to find their house already demolished.

Even the state-run newspaper China Daily seemed to sympathize, writing at the time that “experts believe that the outcry reflects a growing dissatisfaction among common people about the way sites are commandered and buildings demolished. On China’s portal Web sites like Sina, 85 percent of those polled showed support for the couple.”

Ms. Wu reached a settlement with the developer in April 2007, her home was promptly demolished and she became a national celebrity.

Eminent domain is a sensitive issue in many countries, of course, and a handful of Japanese farmers have held on to their small parcels for decades, despite efforts to expand Narita Airport outside Tokyo. Farmers, activists and leftist students fought the police to block construction at Narita in the 1970s, and one riot there left three police officers dead.

“The original plan drafted by the government in the 1970s envisioned three runways at Narita,” The Japan Times reported in April. “But it was unable to acquire the necessary land due to violent opposition from local residents and farmers, forcing it to open with just a single runway in May 1978.”

A second, short, provisional runway was built in time for the 2002 World Cup, but since then, the paper said, “the airport has relied entirely on a single 4,000-meter strip for all passenger and cargo flights.”

Part of the resistance efforts included the building of huts on the contested land, and in a compromise reached more than 40 years later, two of those huts were demolished last week.

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Ashley Hebert and J.P. Rosenbaum Are Married

People Exclusive

By Monica Rizzo

12/01/2012 at 06:15 PM EST

J.P. Rosenbaum and Ashley Hebert

Victor Chavez/Getty

It’s official: Bachelorette star Ashley Hebert and her fiancé J.P. Rosenbaum tied the knot Saturday afternoon in Pasadena, Calif.

Surrounded by family, friends and fellow Bachelor and Bachelorette alumni like Ali Fedotowsky, Emily Maynard, and Jason and Molly Mesnick, the couple said "I do" in an outdoor ceremony officiated by franchise host Chris Harrison.

"Today is all about our friends and family," Hebert, whose nuptials will air Dec. 16 on a two-hour special on ABC, tells PEOPLE. "It's about standing with J.P., looking around at all the people we love in the same room there to celebrate our love."

The 28-year-old dentist from Madawaska, Maine, met New York construction manager Rosenbaum, 35, on season 7 of The Bachelorette. The couple became engaged on the season finale.

Hebert and Rosenbaum are the second couple in the franchise's 24 seasons to make it from their show finale to the altar, following in the footsteps of Bachelorette Trista Rehn, who married Vail, Colo., firefighter Ryan Sutter in 2003.

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Asperger's dropped from revised diagnosis manual

CHICAGO (AP) — The now familiar term "Asperger's disorder" is being dropped. And abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given a scientific-sounding diagnosis called DMDD. But "dyslexia" and other learning disorders remain.

The revisions come in the first major rewrite in nearly 20 years of the diagnostic guide used by the nation's psychiatrists. Changes were approved Saturday.

Full details of all the revisions will come next May when the American Psychiatric Association's new diagnostic manual is published, but the impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide. The manual also is important for the insurance industry in deciding what treatment to pay for, and it helps schools decide how to allot special education.

This diagnostic guide "defines what constellations of symptoms" doctors recognize as mental disorders, said Dr. Mark Olfson, a Columbia University psychiatry professor. More important, he said, it "shapes who will receive what treatment. Even seemingly subtle changes to the criteria can have substantial effects on patterns of care."

Olfson was not involved in the revision process. The changes were approved Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., by the psychiatric association's board of trustees.

The aim is not to expand the number of people diagnosed with mental illness, but to ensure that affected children and adults are more accurately diagnosed so they can get the most appropriate treatment, said Dr. David Kupfer. He chaired the task force in charge of revising the manual and is a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

One of the most hotly argued changes was how to define the various ranges of autism. Some advocates opposed the idea of dropping the specific diagnosis for Asperger's disorder. People with that disorder often have high intelligence and vast knowledge on narrow subjects but lack social skills. Some who have the condition embrace their quirkiness and vow to continue to use the label.

And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services.

But the revision will not affect their education services, experts say.

The new manual adds the term "autism spectrum disorder," which already is used by many experts in the field. Asperger's disorder will be dropped and incorporated under that umbrella diagnosis. The new category will include kids with severe autism, who often don't talk or interact, as well as those with milder forms.

Kelli Gibson of Battle Creek, Mich., who has four sons with various forms of autism, said Saturday she welcomes the change. Her boys all had different labels in the old diagnostic manual, including a 14-year-old with Asperger's.

"To give it separate names never made sense to me," Gibson said. "To me, my children all had autism."

Three of her boys receive special education services in public school; the fourth is enrolled in a school for disabled children. The new autism diagnosis won't affect those services, Gibson said. She also has a 3-year-old daughter without autism.

People with dyslexia also were closely watching for the new updated doctors' guide. Many with the reading disorder did not want their diagnosis to be dropped. And it won't be. Instead, the new manual will have a broader learning disorder category to cover several conditions including dyslexia, which causes difficulty understanding letters and recognizing written words.

The trustees on Saturday made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several work groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses.

The revised guidebook "represents a significant step forward for the field. It will improve our ability to accurately diagnose psychiatric disorders," Dr. David Fassler, the group's treasurer and a University of Vermont psychiatry professor, said after the vote.

The shorthand name for the new edition, the organization's fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, is DSM-5. Group leaders said specifics won't be disclosed until the manual is published but they confirmed some changes. A 2000 edition of the manual made minor changes but the last major edition was published in 1994.

Olfson said the manual "seeks to capture the current state of knowledge of psychiatric disorders. Since 2000 ... there have been important advances in our understanding of the nature of psychiatric disorders."

Catherine Lord, an autism expert at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York who was on the psychiatric group's autism task force, said anyone who met criteria for Asperger's in the old manual would be included in the new diagnosis.

One reason for the change is that some states and school systems don't provide services for children and adults with Asperger's, or provide fewer services than those given an autism diagnosis, she said.

Autism researcher Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, said small studies have suggested the new criteria will be effective. But she said it will be crucial to monitor so that children don't lose services.

Other changes include:

—A new diagnosis for severe recurrent temper tantrums — disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Critics say it will medicalize kids' who have normal tantrums. Supporters say it will address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs. Bipolar disorder involves sharp mood swings and affected children are sometimes very irritable or have explosive tantrums.

—Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn't a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with "gender dysphoria," which means emotional distress over one's gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner .

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Asian tourists flock to South Coast Plaza

It's Day 3 of his four-day visit, and, of course, Yuki Izuka — for the third time — is back at South Coast Plaza.

Sporting black slacks, leather tote, a pinstripe jacket and crisp tie, the pharmacist from Gunma, Japan, heads straight for the most glittering of shops: Tiffany.

He's on a mission to find a ring for his wife. "It is very expensive — but even more expensive in my home," he says. "Better if I can get something here."

Skipping tariffs and taxes, foreign shoppers flush with cash fill their Southern California trips with shopping sprees at places like South Coast Plaza, and increasingly, employees at the luxury shopping center are taking extraordinary steps to host them, trained to fulfill the tiniest of needs.

South Coast Plaza has become a destination for overseas Asians, who bundle trips to Disneyland with carefully plotted excursions to the retail mecca, stocking up on snug blue jeans, watches, luggage, purses and flashy sunglasses selling for $500 a pair.

"We could have seen it in American Vogue and we're here to get it," said Izuka, looking magazine model-sleek as he and his buddies walk past an Italian cafe and ride an escalator toward the center's Jewel Court, a cluster of high-end jewelry boutiques where foreigners pay cash for $100,000 necklaces or other sparkling baubles.

"I like to buy whatever I can because the prices are so low," says Lucas Xu, comparing the costs to those in China, his homeland.

"And every store has an Asian assistant," said Xu, an economics major in Colorado who has flown in with friends for a shopping excursion. "Wow."

"It's not just about selling somebody something. It's about making them feel important," says South Coast Plaza veteran Werner Escher.

In a sense, Escher is the director of foreign affairs at the center, though technically his title is director of domestic and international markets. He's been on the job more than four decades and travels to China at least once a year to firm up connections with influence makers. He partners with Disneyland and the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum, ready to whisk dignitaries from Beijing and Shanghai to the shopping center, even providing them chauffeurs and guides.

Under his direction, the staff is tightly focused on the foreign traveler.

There's a language-assistance program, with mall and store employees speaking more than 40 languages and dialects. Maps and directions are printed in Korean, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese, among others. Center executives carry business cards featuring Asian characters.

South Coast Plaza is now the first shopping center in the nation to accept UnionPay, China's leading credit card. Center reps also hand out VIP Passport booklets with exclusive offers for travelers. One afternoon, Escher shows it to Shelley Chen, who is from Guangzhou, an economic hub on China's southern coast. He bows and shakes her hand as she's on her way to look for a Gucci purse, having just graduated from law school.

"I like the famous names here," she says of the retailers. "My friends said I must come here."

Scott Hung, a sales director for a semiconductor company in Taiwan, wants to take home gifts for his twin boys. His boss is familiar with South Coast Plaza "and suggested me to go to this place," he said, asking about shops that carry children's goods and that have iPhone docking stations.

Visitors who are overseas celebrities get preferred treatment.

When Yang Mi, one of China's leading actresses, who boasts 22 million followers on Sina Weibo — similar to Twitter — came to South Coast, center officials entertained the actress and her entourage in a plush VIP Access Suite near Saks Fifth Avenue. They hosted the Chinese press corps, which swarmed in to interview and photograph her.

"For her to be here is major," Escher says. "It fills out the playlist of the people we want to attract."

Not to miss a beat, the center — which bills itself as a "shopping resort" — served as a ping-pong tournament venue to the top players in the U.S. and China. The cast of "Raise the Red Lantern," a production of the National Ballet of China, also descended on South Coast, accompanied by diplomats.

That's apart from outreach directed at the local Asian clientele, highlighting the lunar new year and the autumn moon festival. Managers at anchor stores like Macy's scramble to hire Chinese-speaking staff. And shopping at South Coast means visitors might avoid three taxes for luxury items imported to China: customs tariffs, value-added tax and consumption tax. Trade missions between Southern California and China can include a stop at one of the most upscale malls in America.

Concierge Stepheny Southa came to the aid of a pregnant guest recently. Speaking in Mandarin, the woman told her: "You're my size. I need to buy some clothes that I can wear after having the baby."

Southa said she went with the expectant mother to try on multiple outfits for her.

"We have the ability to satisfy someone who comes from a long distance," Southa says.

Robert Sun, founder of the American Chinese CEO Society, says he has taken guests from China's Shandong province to South Coast for dinner and to buy presents.

"They fall in love because of the large number of brand names. No other place can compare," he recalls. Foreign visitors are familiar with Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive, Sun added, "but now they see South Coast as the best shopping. When somebody has a good experience buying, like, a bag, they go and tell their friends."

If there's one thing missing from the experience for shoppers from China, it's a Chinese restaurant. And shoppers have pointed that out, said Escher, who's been scouting candidates when he travels overseas. Officials hope to make an announcement by the lunar new year in February, an event they anticipate will be covered prominently by the ethnic media.

"Shopping," Escher says, "is the No. 1 activity when people travel."

anh.do@latimes.com

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Zynga shares slide after privileged status with Facebook ends

(Reuters) – Shares of gaming company Zynga Inc fell as much as 10 percent, a day after the “Farmville” creator reached an agreement with Facebook Inc that reduces its dependence on the social networking giant.

The companies reported in regulatory filings on Thursday that they have reached an agreement to amend a 2010 deal that was widely seen as giving Zynga privileged status on the world’s No.1 social network.

Zynga gets a freer hand to operate a standalone gaming website, but gives up its ability to promote its site on Facebook and to draw from the thriving social network of about 1 billion users.

“Although Zynga investors have reacted negatively to Thursday’s announcements so far, we view them as a long-term positive for both companies,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a note to clients.

“Zynga now has an advantage to offer more payment options which could result in additional subscribers who are not Facebook users,” he said, maintaining his “outperform” rating and price target of $ 4 on the stock.

Both internet companies have been trying to reduce their interdependence, with Zynga starting up its own Zynga.com platform, and Facebook wooing other games developers.

In recent quarters, fees from Zynga contributed 15 percent of Facebook’s revenue, while Zynga relies on Facebook for roughly 80 percent of its revenue.

Francisco-based Zynga’s shares were down 7 percent at $ 2.44 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

Facebook shares were down more than 1 percent at $ 26.98.

(Reporting By Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Dennis Quaid Files for Divorce, Seeks Joint Custody

By Mike Fleeman

11/30/2012 at 09:20 PM EST

Kimberly Buffington-Quaid and Dennis Quaid

Casey Rodgers/NBC/AP

Dennis Quaid is ready to end his marriage for good.

After his wife of eight years, Kimberly Buffington-Quaid, sought legal separation in October, the Vegas star filed Friday for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The actor requests joint physical and legal custody of their 4-year-old twins, Thomas and Zoe, and offers to pay spousal support, according to the petition.

This will be the third divorce for Quaid, 58, who was previously married to Meg Ryan and P.J. Soles.

Kimberly, a former real estate agent, initially filed for divorce in March. She
put the divorce on hold a month later, pulling the papers so they could work on their marriage, before then filing for separation.

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Kenya village pairs AIDS orphans with grandparents

NYUMBANI, Kenya (AP) — There are no middle-aged people in Nyumbani. They all died years ago, before this village of hope in Kenya began. Only the young and old live here.

Nyumbani was born of the AIDS crisis. The 938 children here all saw their parents die. The 97 grandparents — eight grandfathers among them — saw their middle-aged children die. But put together, the bookend generations take care of one another.

Saturday is World AIDS Day, but the executive director of the aid group Nyumbani, which oversees the village of the same name, hates the name which is given to the day because for her the word AIDS is so freighted with doom and death. These days, it doesn't necessarily mean a death sentence. Millions live with the virus with the help of anti-retroviral drugs, or ARVs. And the village she runs is an example of that.

"AIDS is not a word that we should be using. At the beginning when we came up against HIV, it was a terminal disease and people were presenting at the last phase, which we call AIDS," said Sister Mary Owens. "There is no known limit to the lifespan now so that word AIDS should not be used. So I hate World AIDS Day, follow? Because we have moved beyond talking about AIDS, the terminal stage. None of our children are in the terminal stage."

In the village, each grandparent is charged with caring for about a dozen "grandchildren," one or two of whom will be biological family. That responsibility has been a life-changer for Janet Kitheka, who lost one daughter to AIDS in 2003. Another daughter died from cancer in 2004. A son died in a tree-cutting accident in 2006 and the 63-year-old lost two grandchildren in 2007, including one from AIDS.

"When I came here I was released from the grief because I am always busy instead of thinking about the dead," said Kitheka. "Now I am thinking about building a new house with 12 children. They are orphans. I said to myself, 'Think about the living ones now.' I'm very happy because of the children."

As she walks around Nyumbani, which is three hours' drive east of Nairobi, 73-year-old Sister Mary is greeted like a rock star by little girls in matching colorful school uniforms. Children run and play, and sleep in bunk beds inside mud-brick homes. High schoolers study carpentry or tailoring. But before 2006, this village did not exist, not until a Catholic charity petitioned the Kenyan government for land on which to house orphans.

Everyone here has been touched by HIV or AIDS. But only 80 children have HIV and thanks to anti-retroviral drugs, none of them has AIDS.

"They can dream their dreams and live a long life," Owens said.

Nyumbani relies heavily on U.S. funds but it is aiming to be self-sustaining.

The kids' bunk beds are made in the technical school's shop. A small aquaponics project is trying to grow edible fish. The mud bricks are made on site. Each grandparent has a plot of land for farming.

The biggest chunk of aid comes from the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has given the village $2.5 million since 2006. A British couple gives $50,000 a year. A tree-growing project in the village begun by an American, John Noel, now stands six years from its first harvest. Some 120,000 trees have already been planted and thousands more were being planted last week.

"My wife and I got married as teenagers and started out being very poor. Lived in a trailer. And we found out what it was like to be in a situation where you can't support yourself," he said. "As an entrepreneur I looked to my enterprise skills to see what we could do to sustain the village forever, because we are in our 60s and we wanted to make sure that the thousand babies and children, all the little ones, were taken care of."

He hopes that after a decade the timber profits from the trees will make the village totally self-sustaining.

But while the future is looking brighter, the losses the orphans' suffered can resurface, particularly when class lessons are about family or medicine, said Winnie Joseph, the deputy headmaster at the village's elementary school. Kitheka says she tries to teach the kids how to love one another and how to cook and clean. But older kids sometimes will threaten to hit her after accusing her of favoring her biological grandchildren, she said.

For the most part, though, the children in Nyumbani appear to know how lucky they are, having landed in a village where they are cared for. An estimated 23.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV as of 2011, representing 69 percent of the global HIV population, according to UNAIDS. Eastern and southern Africa are the hardest-hit regions. Millions of people — many of them parents — have died.

Kitheka noted that children just outside the village frequently go to bed hungry. And ARVs are harder to come by outside the village. The World Health Organization says about 61 percent of Kenyans with HIV are covered by ARVs across the country.

Paul Lgina, 14, contrasted the difference between life in Nyumbani, which in Swahili means simply "home," and his earlier life.

"In the village I get support. At my mother's home I did not have enough food, and I had to go to the river to fetch water," said Lina, who, like all the children in the village, has neither a mother or a father.

When Sister Mary first began caring for AIDS orphans in the early 1990s, she said her group was often told not to bother.

"At the beginning nobody knew what to do with them. In 1992 we were told these children are going to die anyway," she said. "But that wasn't our spirit. Today, kids we were told would die have graduated from high school."

___

On the Internet:

http://www.trees4children.org/

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New Georgia Government Starts Punishing Members of Old

Justyna Mielnikiewicz for The New York Times

Georgians in the office of Archil Kbilashvili, the nation’s new prosecutor, to file complaints.

TBILISI, Georgia — These days, when the Georgian prosecutor’s office opens, people are lined up, clutching plastic bags full of documents. One after another, they are presenting their case that President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government stripped them of something: a state job, a piece of land, an apartment. Most of them want to see someone punished.

The promise that officials would be punished helped propel the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili to victory in October parliamentary elections, dislodging the group of politicians who had controlled Georgia for nine years. Mr. Saakashvili conceded the loss and agreed to enter the opposition, and for the first time in Georgia’s post-Soviet history, power changed hands legally.

About two months later, the Georgian experiment — to many in the West, a last hope for building democracy in inhospitable post-Soviet terrain — hangs in the balance.

Mr. Ivanishvili has embarked on the project of prosecuting former officials more swiftly than anyone expected, saying he cannot ignore the public’s demand for justice. But numerous cases are targeting political rivals, since Mr. Saakashvili remains president until next October. The authorities have already charged 23 officials from Mr. Saakashvili’s government with crimes like corruption and torture, and they may prosecute his former interior minister, who is also the leader of the Parliament’s main opposition party.

Alexander Rondeli, a political analyst, said Mr. Ivanishvili was following in the winner-take-all tradition of Georgian politics.

“In Georgia, the political enemy is an enemy. I don’t think it gives a very good image to this country, but it is our culture,” said Mr. Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s clear now that the new political force wants to annihilate the previous one. So that is completely clear. It does not look very much like democracy, but they say that the rule of law is higher.”

It was apparent there would be some kind of legal reckoning if Mr. Saakashvili lost power. Though his government was embraced in the United States and Europe for its pro-Western orientation, complaints mounted at home, especially about police brutality and the lack of due process in the justice system.

This fall, video was released showing prison inmates being beaten and sodomized by guards, releasing a huge wave of public anger. Rights activists have long complained that officials acted with impunity in grave cases, like the death of Sandro Girgvliani, a bank executive who was abducted by law enforcement officers in 2006 after an altercation.

As a candidate, Mr. Ivanishvili promised to deliver justice swiftly, sometimes claiming he could create an independent court system in as little as a year. Asked how, he told Forbes, “You have to jail one minister — two, max — to show everyone that there will be no forgiveness. Show that there’s political will up there, and it will all line up quickly.”

Georgia’s new prosecutor, Archil Kbilashvili, said that more than 3,000 criminal complaints had been filed against former officials over the last month, and he planned to triple the number of investigators in the division handling misuse of authority. If there is a criticism he hears most often from Georgians, he said, it is that he is acting too slowly.

As an example, he offered the case of Bacho Akhalaia, a much-feared former defense and interior minister who fled the country after the elections, evidently expecting to be arrested. When news got out that Mr. Akhalaia had returned, Mr. Kbilashvili said, he had been in his job for just five days when he was inundated with “many, many phone calls” asking why he had not ordered Mr. Akhalaia’s arrest.

“I said I have no evidence against him, he is a free citizen of this country,” Mr. Kbilashvili said. Still, the next day, Mr. Akhalaia was arrested based on the relatively mild charges of striking a sergeant with a knife handle and publicly beating servicemen. After that, new allegations began to flow in from citizens who were “somehow encouraged” to testify against Mr. Akhalaia, Mr. Kbilashvili said.

Two prominent legal rights groups have already warned that Mr. Ivanishvili’s team is approaching questions of justice too hastily. Tamar Chugoshvili, of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, said her group withdrew from a parliamentary effort to compile a list of political prisoners for release, because a two-week deadline made it “impossible to really study the cases in detail.”

Olesya Vartanyan contributed reporting.

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The X Factor Announces Top 6

TV Watch

The X Factor

11/29/2012 at 09:40 PM EST

From left; Demi Lovato, Britney Spears and Simon Cowell

FOX

Mario Lopez called the first elimination on Thursday's The X Factor a "bit of a shocker."

And so was the second.

The top eight contestants sang No. 1 hits Wednesday in an emotional night. Keep reading to find out which two performers were sent packing – and who's in season 2's top six ...

Paige Thomas was the first to go – which is shocking because she toned down her over-the-top performing style to sing Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" like a like a "legitimate pop star," according to Simon Cowell.

That left Demi Lovato with just one singer on her team: CeCe Frey, who was told (by Cowell) to "pack her bags" Wednesday after her performance of "Lady Marmalade."

But L.A. Reid's contestant Vino Alan and Team Britney's Diamond White were in the bottom two and had to sing for survival. He performed "Trouble" and she sang Beyoncé's "I Was Here."

L.A. voted to send home Diamond; Britney returned the favor and voted to send home Vino. Demi voted Vino out as well. That left Simon ... and he fell in line with the female panelists, voting to get rid of Vino. Either one would have been a shock but Vino had been ranked third last week.

Here's how the top six rank this week:
1. Carly Rose Sonenclar
2. Tate Stevens
3. Emblem3
4. Fifth Harmony
5. CeCe Frey
6. Diamond White

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