Male artists lead 2013 Grammy nominations

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – Male artists led the nominations announced on Wednesday for the 2013 Grammys, as fun., Frank Ocean, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys landed six nods each for music’s biggest awards.

The nominations for New York-based indie-pop band fun. – made up of Nate Ruess, Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff – included the four main categories for record, song and album of the year, and best new artist.

fun., which also performed at the Grammy nominations concert with Janelle Monae, said it felt good to be recognized and “took pride” in its live performances.

“Tonight, all I wanted to do was get up and really give it our all … receiving the nomination is amazing and a culmination of hard work the three of us have put into this band,” lead singer Ruess told reporters backstage.

The group scored a huge hit with its first single, “We Are Young,” and then followed that up with its successful album “Some Nights” and single of the same name.

Joining it in the album, record of the year and best new artist categories was hip hop artist Ocean.

The 25-year-old rapper-singer made waves earlier this year after revealing his first love was a man, a groundbreaking move in the hip hop industry, which has faced criticism in the past for being hostile toward gays.

His debut album, “Channel Orange” was a critical and commercial success, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart in July.

Ocean and fun. will be competing with blues-rock group Alabama Shakes, country singer Hunter Hayes and folk-rockers The Lumineers for the coveted best new artist title.

While young male artists made up a large portion of nominees in key categories, noticeably absent was 18-year-old Canadian singer Justin Bieber, one of 2012′s biggest pop music stars with chart-topping album “Believe” and singles such as “Boyfriend.”

The winners will be announced at the televised awards show in Los Angeles on February 10.

AFTER ADELE, MALE ARTISTS LEAD

After British singer Adele dominated the previous Grammy Awards with her juggernaut album “21,” male artists took the lead in the album of the year category, where Ocean and fun. are competing with The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons and Jack White.

British folk band Mumford & Sons, which scored six nominations both in 2011 and 2012 for its debut album, “Sigh No More,” landed six more nominations on Wednesday for its chart-topping sophomore album, “Babel,” which is the second biggest-selling album in the United States this year.

Ohio rock duo The Black Keys, formed by frontman Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, landed five nominations, while Auerbach also notched a non-classical producer of the year nomination for his work on four albums.

Blues-rocker Jack White, the former frontman of The White Stripes, picked up three nods for his chart-topping debut solo album “Blunderbuss.”

Rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West continued to pick up nods for their 2011 album, “Watch The Throne,” including best rap performance for “N****s in Paris.” Jay-Z also landed nods for collaborating on songs with Young Jeezy and Rihanna, while West scored multiple nominations for his song “Mercy.”

Kelly Clarkson was one of the few leading female nominees, picking up three nominations, including record of the year and best pop vocal album.

R&B singer Rihanna also landed three nods, including best solo pop performance for “Where Have You Been.”

Record of the year nominees saw an assortment of rock, pop and hip hop nominees, with Clarkson’s “Stronger” competing with The Black Keys‘ “Lonely Boy,” fun.’s “We Are Young,” Australian artist Gotye’s heartbreak hit “Somebody That I Used To Know,” Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You,” and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

To be eligible for nominations this year, artists had to release their music between October 1, 2011, and September 30, 2012.

Adele, who swept the awards in February with six accolades including the top three, landed only one nomination this year for best pop solo performance, as she did not release any music in the eligibility time frame.

The nominations for the top awards and main categories were announced during an hour-long televised concert in Nashville for the first time, co-hosted by country-pop artist Swift and veteran Grammy host, rapper-actor LL Cool J.

Adding a twist to the announcements, Hayes sang the nominees for best pop album, a tight contest between Maroon 5, Clarkson, Pink, fun. and Florence and the Machine. Hayes picked up two nods for best new artist and best country vocal performance.

British rock legends The Who will receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in February.

(Writing by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Peter Cooney and Lisa Shumaker)

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Recipes for Health: Winter Squash and Walnut Spread — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

2 pounds pumpkin or winter squash, such as kabocha or butternut, seeds and membranes scraped away, cut into large pieces (if using butternut, cut in half crosswise, just above the bulbous bottom part, then cut these halves into lengthwise quarters and scrape away the seeds and membranes)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces/35 g) lightly toasted walnuts, finely chopped

1 ounce Parmesan, grated (about 1/3 cup)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and oil the foil. Place the squash on the baking sheet and rub or toss with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Place in the oven and bake until tender, 40 to 60 minutes depending on the type of squash and the size of the pieces. Every 15 minutes use tongs to turn the pieces over so different surfaces become browned on the foil. Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then peel and place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse several times, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then purée until smooth.

2. Heat another tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Add a generous pinch of salt, turn the heat to medium low and cook, stirring often, until very tender, sweet and lightly caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and add to the squash. Add the mint, nutmeg, walnuts, Parmesan, and 1 tablespoon olive oil and pulse together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve on croutons.

Yield: 2 cups

Advance preparation: This will keep for three to four days in the refrigerator and freezes well. It benefits from being made a day ahead.

Variation: Omit the Parmesan for a vegan version. If desired, blend in 1 to 2 teaspoons of light miso.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 35 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 1 milligram cholesterol; 4 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 15 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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NASA plans new rover mission on Mars

NASA officials announced plans to build a new rover that would follow Curiosity and Opportunity on the Red Planet's surface in 2020, potentially to collect soil or rock samples that could later be sent back to Earth.

The objectives are not yet set, nor are the tools the rover would wield, said John Grunsfeld, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. But Grunsfeld's remarks Tuesday raised the hopes of planetary scientists that NASA would be focusing its efforts on the complex and costly task of retrieving a piece of Mars.

"Collecting a cache of samples is difficult — it requires a very capable vehicle," said Steve Squyres, lead scientist for the Mars exploration rover mission, which put Opportunity on the planet in 2004. "The vehicle that John Grunsfeld just described for launch in 2020 is fully capable of doing that job."

The announcement electrified many of the roughly 18,000 researchers attending the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting this week in San Francisco.

Before Curiosity landed on Mars this summer, NASA was unsure of its future direction in exploring the solar system. Big-budget missions to Mars seemed politically unpalatable after Curiosity's $2.5-billion price tag, and no other major missions had been scheduled, even as the next launch window in 2018 approached.

But the rover's dramatic landing and early scientific exploits have rejuvenated enthusiasm for Martian exploration.

That has given a boost to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home of the Mars exploration program and the expected lead on the new rover program.

The new rover, estimated to cost $1.5 billion, promises to provide a "shot in the arm" for the local economy, said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), whose district includes JPL in La Canada Flintridge.

Mars missions make up a significant share of JPL's projects. Over the last decade, Curiosity alone employed about 3,000 staffers and brought in 4,000 others from outside the lab.

Rather than reinventing the rover all over again, Grunsfeld said NASA would base designs for the new machine on Curiosity's tried-and-true architecture.

The mission would use the same landing method as the spacecraft carrying Curiosity did, a complex sequence involving a heat shield, a parachute and a hovering platform that lowered the rover to the surface by cable before hurling itself away.

It would even use spare parts collecting dust in Curiosity's proverbial closet.

There are advantages to building a rover along the lines of the Mars Science Laboratory, as the Curiosity mission is officially known, said David Paige, a UCLA planetary scientist working on the Messenger mission to Mercury.

Engineers have worked out the kinks from that mission. They've proved that the landing system — which inspired NASA's popular online video, "Seven Minutes of Terror" — can work without a hitch.

They can also tap the same scientists and engineers that made the previous landing mission a success, said Fuk Li, head of the Mars Exploration Directorate at JPL.

"They're capitalizing on the investment that's already been made," Paige said.

It's unclear what the rover would do on the Martian surface, Grunsfeld said. One idea is for the rover to collect and store soil and rock samples. That would only be the first step; a far more complex mission would be to bring them back to Earth.

The Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which publishes long-term goals for exploring the solar system, touted a sample-storing mission as a top priority over the next decade. But this would involve a major technological leap: NASA would have to find a way to protect the samples, launch them from the Martian surface and safely carry them home.

President Obama has set a goal of sending astronauts to Mars orbit sometime in the 2030s. Grunsfeld said a robotic sample-return mission would help provide a road map for a manned mission.

Another option would be to forget the sample cache, and instead outfit the rover with the most advanced tools possible and send it to another tantalizing spot on the Martian surface.

There already are some well-researched options: Curiosity's scientists agonized over which of several tempting landing spots to choose.

Some scientists, however, pointed out that there were other interplanetary spots — Saturn's moon Titan, or the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa — that could harbor the ingredients for life but have been neglected in recent years.

"What about the rest of the solar system?" said UCLA astronomer David Jewitt. "Sure, Mars is one place in the solar system, but there are many other really exciting places we ought to be going as well."

If the project goes ahead — it is contingent upon Congress agreeing to fund NASA at the level the Obama administration has requested for the next five years — it would be the seventh NASA mission either being operated or planned.

Curiosity and Opportunity currently roam the surface of the Red Planet. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Odyssey satellites circle above them. The MAVEN orbiter, set to launch in 2013, will study the planet's upper atmosphere, and the 2016 InSight mission will probe the planet's insides.

The European Space Agency also has spacecraft orbiting Mars and plans to send a rover to the Red Planet in 2018.

amina.khan@latimes.com

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Ex-”Malcolm in the Middle” star Muniz, 26, suffers mini-stroke

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former “Malcolm in the Middle” child star Frankie Muniz said on Tuesday he had suffered a mini-stroke, at the age of 26.

“I was in the hospital last Friday. I suffered a ‘Mini Stroke‘, which was not fun at all. Have to start taking care of my body! Getting old!,” Muniz said on Twitter.

Muniz put his acting career on hold six years ago to race cars for a living, and earlier this year he joined a rock band.

According to celebrity website TMZ.com, Muniz was taken ill in Arizona last Friday when friends noticed he was having trouble speaking and understanding.

Mini-strokes usually affect those over the age of 55. They are temporary interruptions of blood flow to part of the brain but do not kill brain tissue, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Muniz’s agent did not return calls for comment.

Muniz played the title role in the hit TV comedy “Malcolm in the Middle” for six years, and appeared in teen movies “Big Fat Liar” and “Agent Cody Banks.”

When the TV show ended its run in 2006, Muniz said he was stepping away from acting to pursue a full-time career as a race-car driver. Earlier his year he joined Pennsylvania-based indie band Kingsfoil as a drummer.

Muniz is due to turn 27 on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; editing by Matthew Lewis)

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Recipes for Health: Mediterranean Lentil Purée — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

The spicing here is the same as one used in a popular Egyptian lentil salad. The dish is inspired by a lentil purée that accompanies bread at Terra Bistro in Vail, Colo.

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large garlic clove, minced or pureed

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground coriander seeds

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom seeds

1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek seeds

3/4 cup brown or green lentils, washed and picked over

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 tablespoon plain low-fat yogurt (more to taste) or additional liquid from the lentils for a vegan version

Chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

1. Combine 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and the garlic in a small frying pan or saucepan over medium heat. When the garlic begins to sizzle, add the spices. Stir together for about 30 seconds, then remove from the heat and set aside.

2. Place the lentils in a medium saucepan, cover by 1 to 2 inches with water, add a bay leaf, and bring to a boil. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat and cook until tender, 40 to 50 minutes. Remove the bay leaf. Taste and adjust salt. Place a strainer over a bowl and drain the lentils. Transfer to a food processor fitted with the steel blade.

3. Purée the lentils along with the garlic and spices. With the machine running add the additional olive oil and the garlic. Thin out as desired with the broth from the lentils. The purée should be very smooth; if it is dry or pasty, add more yogurt, broth, or olive oil. Taste and adjust salt. If desired add a few drops of lemon juice. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle the cilantro over the top if desired, or spread directly on croutons or pita triangles.

Advance preparation: This will keep for four days in the refrigerator. You will probably need to moisten it with additional yogurt, olive oil or broth, and you may want to warm it and drizzle on a little more olive oil before serving.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 31 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 3 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 1 milligram sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Chino Hills seeks to close home used by pregnant Chinese women

A Chino Hills residence allegedly housing women from China who want to give birth to U.S.-citizen children is on the verge of being shut down by the city after complaints about traffic and a sewage spill.

The home is on a hilltop at the end of a long driveway on Woodglen Drive, an area zoned for single family houses. City officials have issued a cease and desist order, alleging that the site is being used as a hotel in a rural residential zone. They plan to take the property owner to court.

"Who the customer base is, is not our concern," said city spokeswoman Denise Cattern. "Our concern is that it's a hotel."

A website that city officials believe is associated with the business describes a full range of services, from shopping trips for pregnant women to assistance obtaining American passports for newborns.

A 30-day stay at the Chino Hills facility, along with a month of prenatal care, costs $10,500 to $11,500, according to the Chinese-language website, www.asiamchild.com.

Asiam Child is based in Shanghai, with branches in Anhui province and Nanjing, the website says.

The property owner, Hai Yong Wu, did not return a call seeking comment. A man who left the hotel in a black BMW on Monday afternoon would not speak to reporters.

So-called birth tourism appears to be an active but largely under-the-radar industry in Southern California. One local Chinese phone book has five pages of listings for birthing centers, where women from China and Taiwan stay for a month or so before going home with their U.S.-citizen babies. When the children get older, they may return here to study, perhaps paving the way for the rest of the family to immigrate more easily.

In San Gabriel last year, code enforcement officials shut down a facility where about 10 mothers and seven newborns were staying.

Federal immigration officials say there is no law prohibiting pregnant women from entering the U.S. But obtaining a visa through fraud would be a crime, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Chino Hills officials have notified federal authorities about the residence. Kice said she could not confirm whether ICE is investigating.

Neighbors report seeing groups of pregnant women walking along the quiet cul de sac. Cars from the residence sometimes drive down the street at unsafe speeds, they said.

In addition to the single-family zoning violation, the city has cited the owner for allegedly constructing additional rooms without a permit. A sewage spill estimated at 2,000 gallons also prompted a cease and desist order.

"It would be nice to have my neighborhood back. It was a quiet little street," said neighbor Sonya Valez.

On Saturday, a group called Not in Chino Hills staged a street-corner protest against the site.

"They go back," said Rossana Mitchell, a co-founder of the group. "They don't pay taxes, they don't assimilate."

cindy.chang@latimes.com

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Facebook voting begins on Instagram data-sharing, email privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc opened the polls on Monday for its roughly 1 billion users to vote on a variety of changes to the social network‘s policies, including a proposal to scrap the user voting system that Facebook introduced in 2009.

Facebook also said it had “clarified” some of the proposed changes, specifying that a new policy allowing it to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram will be carried out in compliance with applicable laws and that Facebook will seek user consent when necessary.

The proposed changes, which Facebook announced on November 21, generated roughly 89,000 user comments as well as concerns from some privacy-advocacy groups and a request for more information from the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Facebook’s European business has its headquarters.

“Based on your feedback and after consultation with our regulators, including the Irish Data Protection Commissioner‘s Office, we’ve further clarified some of our proposals,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook Vice President of Communications, Public Policy and Marketing in a post on Facebook’s company blog on Monday.

Facebook is proposing to eliminate the 4-year-old system that allows users to vote on changes to its governance policies. The company says the voting system hasn’t functioned as intended and is no longer suited to its current situation as a large publicly traded company subject to oversight by various regulatory agencies.

Facebook said on Monday that it would incorporate user suggestions for creating new tools to “enhance communication” on privacy and governance matters.

Another proposal would loosen the restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system. The company said it planned to replace the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.

Facebook’s potential information sharing with Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that it bought in October, flows from proposed changes that would allow the company to share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates it owns.

The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people’s personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc.

Facebook said on Monday that the proposed change was “standard in the industry” and “promotes the efficient and effective use of the services Facebook and its affiliates,” such as allowing users in the U.S. to interact with users in Europe.

“This provision covers Instagram and allows us to store Instagram’s server logs and administrative records in a way that is more efficient than maintaining totally separate storage systems,” the company wrote in a separate post on its website Monday titled “explanation of changes”.

“Where additional consent of our users is required, we will obtain it,” Facebook said.

Facebook users have until December 10 to vote on the policies using a special third-party application provided by Facebook and Facebook said the results will be certified by an independent auditor.

The vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Andrew Hay)

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News Corp to buy Cleveland Indians sports channel: sources

(Reuters) – News Corp is expected to announce as early as this week that it will buy SportsTime Ohio, a TV channel owned by the Cleveland Indians baseball team, for around $ 230 million, sources told Reuters, marking its second acquisition of a regional sports channel since late last month.

The deal would give News Corp‘s Fox Sports unit the rights to broadcast the Major League Baseball team‘s games, according to two sources with knowledge of the negotiations. That would add to the games that its Fox Sports Ohio channel carries from basketball’s Cleveland Cavaliers, the Cincinnati Reds baseball team and others.

The move underscores a push by media companies to target regional sports channels as broadcast rights for many major sporting events are already sewn up for years. Such channels show games from local colleges and professional teams that heavyweight ESPN, owned by Walt Disney Co, or other national channels do not carry.

Last month, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp said it would buy a 49 percent stake in the YES network, a sports channel controlled by the New York Yankees baseball team, in a deal that sources said was valued at $ 3 billion. Fox is also negotiating a 25-year extension of its existing agreement to carry Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games, said one of the people, and could pay as much as $ 6 billion for those rights.

New York-based News Corp has been stepping up its efforts to control the rights to key sports teams in response to Time Warner Cable Inc’s deal in February 2011 to pay $ 3 billion to carry the Los Angeles Lakers basketball games for its Time Warner SportsNet Channel.

Time Warner has said it is interested in the Dodgers rights if Fox cannot extend its current agreement with the team. Time Warner had also bid for SportsTime Ohio, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported earlier on its website.

The sources spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been announced.

News Corp representatives did not return emails seeking comment. Representatives for the Cleveland Indians and SportsTime Ohio could not be located.

“Since we launched, people have been interested in buying the network,” SportsTime Ohio President Jim Liberatore was quoted as telling the Plain Dealer.

Indians owner Larry Dolan is eager to complete the deal by the end of December, one of the people with knowledge of the transaction told Reuters, to avoid increased taxes that could be part of ongoing negotiations between President Obama and Congress on a debt reduction package.

Fox Sports, which operates or holds stakes in 20 regional sports networks, provides sports programming to more than 67 million subscribers. It held the rights to Cleveland Indians games until 2006, when Dolan formed the team’s channel.

No decision has been made on whether SportsTime Ohio would continue as a separate operation or be merged with Fox Sports Ohio, one of the sources told Reuters.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover in Los Angeles and Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

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The New Old Age Blog: On the Alert for Fraud

Unlike some forms of elder abuse, financial exploitation leaves no visible scars. It is under-reported and hard to prosecute. Adding to the tangled dynamics, the abuser is frequently a family member, increasing the victim’s humiliation and denial.

Better by far to try to prevent financial abuse before it wipes out an older person’s assets and hopes for a secure retirement. Though this has proved easier in theory than in practice — most authorities believe financial exploitation and abuse is actually increasing — vigilance represents a crucial first step.

The National Center on Elder Abuse and the Eldercare Locator (the federal service that helps older adults and caregivers find local programs and agencies) have just published “Protect Your Pocketbook,” a brief consumer guide for families and their older relatives. It maps out risk factors, warning signals and prevention strategies and tells where to turn for help.

You can download it from the Web  or order it online through the Eldercare Locator Web site. Or you can call the Locator at 1-800-677-1116 and ask to have a copy mailed to you.

Holidays, when so many adult children head “home,” tend to spur campaigns of this sort: attempts to integrate potentially painful conversations and questions with feasts and gifts.

I have always wondered about the timing of these discussions — first the pies, then the questions about unexplained bank withdrawals and credit card bills? But it is true that our elders can sound dandy during weekly phone calls, then surprise us with their frailty and their struggles when we are there in person to witness them.

Financial abuse, which I have written about before (see scam prevention advice here, along with a sad story), is only part of the picture, but it is a vital issue.

Apart from the advice in the brochure, we would appreciate hearing from readers who have tackled this problem and can tell us what has worked and what hasn’t.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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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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