Specs surface for alleged low-end $99 Nexus 7

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Young down by boardwalk for benefit show

NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Young said Sunday that he couldn't see performing in the area devastated by Superstorm Sandy without doing something to help people who were affected by it.

Young and his longtime backing band, Crazy Horse, will hold a benefit concert for the American Red Cross' storm relief effort Thursday at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. The New Jersey coastline areas were hit hard by the storm in late October.

People in the New York area who suffered damage in the storm have been supporting him for 40 years, he said.

"I couldn't see coming back here and just playing and have it be business as usual," he said. Young is touring in the area, with concerts scheduled for Monday in Brooklyn and Tuesday in Bridgeport, Conn.

Minimum ticket prices for the standing-room show in Atlantic City will be $75 and $150, although Young notes there's no maximum. He hopes to raise several hundred thousand dollars for the Red Cross.

Young said he was invited to join the Dec. 12 benefit at New York's Madison Square Garden that will feature Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, the Who, Kanye West and others, but had other obligations. Besides, there's enough star power there, he said.

"It wasn't going to make much difference whether I was there or not, so I decided to go someplace where I could make a difference," he said.

Young performed at a televised benefit in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, memorably covering John Lennon's "Imagine."

Fans can expect a two-hour plus rock show on Thursday with opening band Everest. No special guests are planned, although Young issued an invitation to "anyone who wants to come in and play with us that we know and we know can play."

It's hard to resist wondering whether Young's epic "Like a Hurricane" will make it onto the set list, given the occasion.

"Anything's possible," Young said. "We have the equipment."

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Vietnam Veterans, Claiming PTSD, Sue for Better Discharges

NEW HAVEN — In the summer of 1968, John Shepherd Jr. enlisted in the Army, figuring that the draft would get him anyway. By January 1969, he was in the Mekong Delta, fighting with the Ninth Infantry Division.

Within a month, his patrol was ambushed, and Mr. Shepherd responded by tossing a hand grenade into a bunker that killed several enemy soldiers. The Army awarded him a Bronze Star with a valor device, one of its highest decorations.

Yet the medal did little to assuage Mr. Shepherd’s sense of anxiousness and futility about the war. A few weeks after his act of heroism, he said, his platoon leader was killed by a sniper as he tried to help Mr. Shepherd out of a canal. It was a breaking point: his behavior became erratic, and at some point he simply refused to go on patrol.

“I never felt fear like I felt when he got shot,” Mr. Shepherd said last week.

After a court-martial, the Army discharged Mr. Shepherd under other-than-honorable conditions, then known as an undesirable discharge. At the time, he was happy just to be a civilian again. But he came to rue that discharge, particularly after his claim for veterans benefits was denied because of it.

Today, Mr. Shepherd, 65, is part of a class-action lawsuit against the armed forces arguing that he and other Vietnam veterans had post-traumatic stress disorder when they were issued other-than-honorable discharges. The suit, filed in Federal District Court, demands that their discharges be upgraded.

The suit raises two thorny issues that could affect thousands of Vietnam veterans: Can they be given a diagnosis of PTSD retroactively, to their time in service, though the disorder was not identified until 1980? And if they can, should recently instituted policies intended to protect troops with PTSD be applied retroactively to their cases?

Mr. Shepherd’s legal team, students with the Yale Law School veterans legal clinic, argues yes on both counts. In court papers, they assert that it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Shepherd and other veterans who were later given PTSD diagnoses began exhibiting troublesome symptoms while in service.

Moreover, under rules put in place during the Iraq war, troops who say they have PTSD must be given medical examinations before they are forced out of the military, to ensure that problematic behavior is not linked to the disorder. If they are given a PTSD diagnosis, service members may still receive an honorable discharge.

“Vietnam War-era veterans, in contrast, have been denied this opportunity for appropriate consideration of the PTSD,” the students said in the complaint.

But the Army says no. In a rejection of an earlier request by Mr. Shepherd to upgrade his discharge, the Army tersely rejected evidence that his misconduct 43 years ago was linked to PTSD and raised questions about whether his platoon leader was actually killed.

A spokesman for the Army said the military has a policy of not discussing pending litigation.

The details of Mr. Shepherd’s case aside, the suit could have a wide impact. The Yale team says that its review of records from 2003 to 2012 shows that 154 Vietnam-era veterans petitioned the Army to upgrade discharges because of PTSD, but that only two were successful. Yet the Army Board of Corrections for Military Records granted upgrades nearly half of the time for other cases.

The students estimate that more than a quarter million Vietnam-era veterans were discharged under other-than-honorable conditions, and that thousands of those probably had PTSD. Their suit names as defendants the secretaries for the Army, Air Force and Navy. Vietnam Veterans of America, the veterans service organization, is joining the case as a plaintiff on Monday.

Discharges that are other than honorable can make it harder for veterans to find work and also disqualify them for veterans benefits.

In Mr. Shepherd’s case, a Department of Veterans Affairs doctor in 2004 gave him a diagnosis of service-connected PTSD. As a result, the department will provide health care for his PTSD. But it will not provide him general medical care, unless he is found to have other health problems related to his service.

Veterans disability compensation is also a problem. Mr. Shepherd’s undesirable discharge was actually upgraded to a general discharge in the 1970s under a special Carter administration program. That upgrade should have made it easier for him to apply for disability compensation. But subsequent legislation enacted by Congress said that clemency upgrades like Mr. Shepherd’s did not automatically qualify veterans for benefits. Mr. Shepherd’s compensation claim was ultimately rejected.

Mr. Shepherd, who has been divorced twice and battled through alcoholism and drug abuse, lives in New Haven, getting by on Social Security and a Teamsters pension. (He drove trucks for years.) He could use the extra money from disability compensation, but what matters as much, he says, is removing the stain of his discharge.

“I want that honorable,” he said. “I did do my part, until I really felt it wasn’t worth getting killed for.”

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Chinatrust Bank to move U.S. headquarters to downtown L.A.

Chinatrust Bank has agreed to move its U.S. headquarters to downtown Los Angeles from Torrance.

The bank will rent two floors in 801 Tower, a company representative said. The high-rise is in the financial district north of Staples Center.

"We wanted to be in a major financial area," said Brian Gregson, head of U.S. retail banking at Chinatrust. "This is the early stage of getting our ducks in a row to start some expansion."

The bank's name will be affixed on top of the 25-story tower at 801 S. Figueroa St., he said.

Chinatrust, which is based in Taiwan, has 12 branches in the United States, including seven in Southern California. The bank will move about 175 employees to the new headquarters by the middle of next year, Gregson said.

Terms of the lease with landlord Mani Bros. Real Estate Group were not disclosed, but data provider CoStar said the agreement is for 10 years. At current rents, the lease for nearly 40,000 square feet would be valued at nearly $20 million.

Chinatrust's decision to move to downtown L.A. is part of a recent trend for businesses to relocate their main offices to the financial center, reversing the exodus of previous decades, real estate broker Ted Simpson of Cushman & Wakefield said.

"This speaks to the emergence of downtown L.A. as a corporate headquarters destination not seen since the 1980s," said Simpson, who represented the bank in the transaction with his partner Michael Ma.

Other companies to recently move their main offices or regional headquarters downtown include law firm Haight Brown Bonesteel and architecture firm Gensler.

"Corporations are once again choosing downtown for its attractiveness to its employees, not just low cost," Simpson said.

Average rents are cheaper downtown than on the popular Westside, in part because downtown has higher vacancy. Large corporations including Arco and First Interstate Bank left downtown in past decades or substantially reduced their offices.

Apartments going up in N. Hollywood

Apartment complexes planned before the demise of redevelopment agencies in California continue to rise in North Hollywood.

The projects in the NoHo Arts District near the northern terminus of the Red Line subway include the recently completed NoHo Senior Villas for elderly low-income tenants.

A larger, $50-million market-rate complex is under construction nearby and has reached its top height of six stories.

Phoenix developer Alliance Residential Co. is building the 308-unit market-rate complex called the Ferrara at 5031 Fair Ave. It is intended to be resort-like with outdoor dining facilities and bars, pools, cabanas and an outdoor movie venue.

"Our goal is to create a luxurious urban getaway for the residents," said Jonas Bronk of Alliance.

The Ferrara is slated for completion late next year.

NoHo Senior Villas, at 5525 Klump Ave., has 49 units and was built by Clifford Beers Housing and PATH Ventures for $16 million. Most of the units are reserved for seniors who were homeless and are living with a mental illness. The five-story complex has on-site facilities for mental health and social service personnel.

Both projects were designed by Killefer Flammang Architects of Santa Monica.

Also recently completed in North Hollywood was the $32-million NoHo Senior Arts Colony. It is intended for residents age 62 and over with interests in such pursuits as singing, acting, photography and writing.

The two senior housing projects are in the former North Hollywood Redevelopment Project Area, which offered tax breaks to developers. State officials dissolved local redevelopment agencies this year to save money.

roger.vincent@latimes.com

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After a billion, what next for Facebook?

MENLO PARK — In just eight years, Facebook signed up more than half the world's Internet population.

Now it's going after the rest.

Facebook wants to reach every single person on the Internet whether they are logging on from a laptop in Santa Monica, an iPhone in Tokyo or a low-tech phone with a tiny screen in Nairobi.

It's parachuting into market after market to take on homegrown social networks by currying favor with the locals and venturing where many people have spotty — if any — access to the Internet.

In Japan, it lets users list their blood types, which the Japanese believe — like astrological signs in the Western world — give insight into personality and temperament. In Africa, Facebook markets a stripped-down, text-only version of its service that works on low-tech mobile phones.

International growth is crucial to maintain its dominance as the world's largest social network. The company's scorching pace of growth has cooled especially in the United States. Facebook must coax users to sign up — and make sure it remains popular with the users it already has — or risk being knocked from its lofty perch.

"We're not a company that is just trying to add more people," said Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product. "What we are trying to do is build a service that everyone in the world can use."

But overseas growth that once seemed to come so easily is slower now. Facebook has already saturated most major markets around the globe. Eight out of 10 Facebook users are outside of the U.S.

"I don't think that Facebook has a chance of attracting another billion users," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.

Inside Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters is a small army out to prove naysayers wrong. Above their desks they have hung flags from around the world that represent their nationalities. They obsessively scan screens that track user growth around the world.

They cheered and popped open champagne in September when the number of active Facebook users crossed 1 billion. But the moment of jubilation quickly passed as they redoubled their efforts to spread Facebook around the globe.

Naomi Gleit is the soft-spoken, headstrong 29-year-old product manager in charge of growth at Facebook. She says Facebook's future is on mobile devices, the medium by which most people will experience the Web in coming years. Facebook now works on more than 2,500 different phones, helping it gain a foothold in emerging markets. And it is forging relationships with mobile phone operators around the world.

Gleit's 150-member team has boots on the ground in far-flung places armed with low-tech phones and cheap data plans. Even team members here carry Nokia phones alongside their iPhones to update their status or check their News Feed.

"We originally built a product for ourselves," Gleit said. "This is different. Now we need to understand the experience of users who are not like us."

Analysts say Facebook already has established an impressive track record of uprooting entrenched competitors. In Britain, it displaced the dominant social network Bebo, forcing AOL to sell it at a huge loss. In Germany, Facebook overtook the homegrown StudiVZ. Facebook even broke Google social network Orkut's stranglehold on Brazil and India.

In 2009, it launched a clever tool to help Facebook users find their Orkut friends on Facebook and instantly send them friend requests. Two years later it swiped Google's top executive in Latin America, Alexandre Hohagen. Facebook sprinted ahead of Orkut one year ago, and now has 61 million active users in Latin America's largest country.

Facebook is treating India as a test lab for how it can spread in other emerging markets such as Indonesia. Facebook, which has offices in Hyderabad, India, has grown from 8 million users in 2010 to 65 million users today. It is aggressively targeting India's youth. A few hundred young Indian programmers recently jammed a Facebook hackathon at a Bangalore convention center to chug chai and brainstorm new apps that would appeal to their friends.

But Facebook has its eyes on a much bigger prize beyond the country's 100 million Internet users: the 900 million-plus Indians on mobile phones. Some analysts predict India will have more Facebook users than any other country including the United States by 2015.

The company also faces significant challenges in India. It must make the service captivating on low-tech mobile phones with unreliable Internet connections and it must gingerly navigate demands from the Indian government to remove objectionable content without alienating users.

Facebook is making some of its biggest moves in Russia, South Korea and Japan, the only major markets where it operates but has penetration of less than 50%, according to research firm ComScore.

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Katzenberg, Spielberg attend Governors Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Stars such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are arriving at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Los Angeles to pay homage to four industry heavyweights.

The film academy's fourth annual Governors Awards are being presented Saturday to honorary Oscar winners Jeffrey Katzenberg, stuntman Hal Needham, documentarian D.A. Pennebaker and American Film Institute founding director George Stevens Jr.

The four men will accept their Oscar statuettes during the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' private dinner program in the Ray Dolby Ballroom. Portions of the untelevised event may be included in the Feb. 24 Academy Awards telecast.

Other guests expected at Saturday's ceremony include Quentin Tarantino, Bradley Cooper, Kristen Stewart, Bryan Cranston and Oscar host Seth MacFarlane.

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Opinion: A Health Insurance Detective Story

I’VE had a long career as a business journalist, beginning at Forbes and including eight years as the editor of Money, a personal finance magazine. But I’ve never faced a more confounding reporting challenge than the one I’m engaged in now: What will I pay next year for the pill that controls my blood cancer?

After making more than 70 phone calls to 16 organizations over the past few weeks, I’m still not totally sure what I will owe for my Revlimid, a derivative of thalidomide that is keeping my multiple myeloma in check. The drug is extremely expensive — about $11,000 retail for a four-week supply, $132,000 a year, $524 a pill. Time Warner, my former employer, has covered me for years under its Supplementary Medicare Program, a plan for retirees that included a special Writers Guild benefit capping my out-of-pocket prescription costs at $1,000 a year. That out-of-pocket limit is scheduled to expire on Jan. 1. So what will my Revlimid cost me next year?

The answers I got ranged from $20 a month to $17,000 a year. One of the first people I phoned said that no matter what I heard, I wouldn’t know the cost until I filed a claim in January. Seventy phone calls later, that may still be the most reliable thing anyone has told me.

Like around 47 million other Medicare beneficiaries, I have until this Friday, Dec. 7, when open enrollment ends, to choose my 2013 Medicare coverage, either through traditional Medicare or a private insurer, as well as my drug coverage — or I will risk all sorts of complications and potential late penalties.

But if a seasoned personal-finance journalist can’t get a straight answer to a simple question, what chance do most people have of picking the right health insurance option?

A study published in the journal Health Affairs in October estimated that a mere 5.2 percent of Medicare Part D beneficiaries chose the cheapest coverage that met their needs. All in all, consumers appear to be wasting roughly $11 billion a year on their Part D coverage, partly, I think, because they don’t get reliable answers to straightforward questions.

Here’s a snapshot of my surreal experience:

NOV. 7 A packet from Time Warner informs me that the company’s new 2013 Retiree Health Care Plan has “no out-of-pocket limit on your expenses.” But Erin, the person who answers at the company’s Benefits Service Center, tells me that the new plan will have “no practical effect” on me. What about the $1,000-a-year cap on drug costs? Is that really being eliminated? “Yes,” she says, “there’s no limit on out-of-pocket expenses in 2013.” I tell her I think that could have a major effect on me.

Next I talk to David at CVS/Caremark, Time Warner’s new drug insurance provider. He thinks my out-of-pocket cost for Revlimid next year will be $6,900. He says, “I know I’m scaring you.”

I call back Erin at Time Warner. She mentions something about $10,000 and says she’ll get an estimate for me in two business days.

NOV. 8 I phone Medicare. Jay says that if I switch to Medicare’s Part D prescription coverage, with a new provider, Revlimid’s cost will drive me into Medicare’s “catastrophic coverage.” I’d pay $2,819 the first month, and 5 percent of the cost of the drug thereafter — $563 a month or maybe $561. Anyway, roughly $9,000 for the year. Jay says AARP’s Part D plan may be a good option.

NOV. 9 Erin at Time Warner tells me that the company’s policy bundles United Healthcare medical coverage with CVS/Caremark’s drug coverage. I can’t accept the medical plan and cherry-pick prescription coverage elsewhere. It’s take it or leave it. Then she puts CVS’s Michele on the line to get me a Revlimid quote. Michele says Time Warner hasn’t transferred my insurance information. She can’t give me a quote without it. Erin says she will not call me with an update. I’ll have to call her.

My oncologist’s assistant steers me to Celgene, Revlimid’s manufacturer. Jennifer in “patient support” says premium assistance grants can cut the cost of Revlimid to $20 or $30 a month. She says, “You’re going to be O.K.” If my income is low enough to qualify for assistance.

NOV. 12 I try CVS again. Christine says my insurance records still have not been transferred, but she thinks my Revlimid might cost $17,000 a year.

Adriana at Medicare warns me that AARP and other Part D providers will require “prior authorization” to cover my Revlimid, so it’s probably best to stick with Time Warner no matter what the cost.

But Brooke at AARP insists that I don’t need prior authorization for my Revlimid, and so does her supervisor Brian — until he spots a footnote. Then he assures me that it will be easy to get prior authorization. All I need is a doctor’s note. My out-of-pocket cost for 2013: roughly $7,000.

NOV. 13 Linda at CVS says her company still doesn’t have my file, but from what she can see about Time Warner’s insurance plans my cost will be $60 a month — $720 for the year.

CVS assigns my case to Rebecca. She says she’s “sure all will be fine.” Well, “pretty sure.” She’s excited. She’s been with the company only a few months. This will be her first quote.

NOV. 14 Giddens at Time Warner puts in an “emergency update request” to get my files transferred to CVS.

Frank Lalli is an editorial consultant on retirement issues and a former senior executive editor at Time Warner’s Time Inc.

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After a billion, what next for Facebook?

MENLO PARK — In just eight years, Facebook signed up more than half the world's Internet population.

Now it's going after the rest.

Facebook wants to reach every single person on the Internet whether they are logging on from a laptop in Santa Monica, an iPhone in Tokyo or a low-tech phone with a tiny screen in Nairobi.

It's parachuting into market after market to take on homegrown social networks by currying favor with the locals and venturing where many people have spotty — if any — access to the Internet.

In Japan, it lets users list their blood types, which the Japanese believe — like astrological signs in the Western world — give insight into personality and temperament. In Africa, Facebook markets a stripped-down, text-only version of its service that works on low-tech mobile phones.

International growth is crucial to maintain its dominance as the world's largest social network. The company's scorching pace of growth has cooled especially in the United States. Facebook must coax users to sign up — and make sure it remains popular with the users it already has — or risk being knocked from its lofty perch.

"We're not a company that is just trying to add more people," said Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product. "What we are trying to do is build a service that everyone in the world can use."

But overseas growth that once seemed to come so easily is slower now. Facebook has already saturated most major markets around the globe. Eight out of 10 Facebook users are outside of the U.S.

"I don't think that Facebook has a chance of attracting another billion users," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.

Inside Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters is a small army out to prove naysayers wrong. Above their desks they have hung flags from around the world that represent their nationalities. They obsessively scan screens that track user growth around the world.

They cheered and popped open champagne in September when the number of active Facebook users crossed 1 billion. But the moment of jubilation quickly passed as they redoubled their efforts to spread Facebook around the globe.

Naomi Gleit is the soft-spoken, headstrong 29-year-old product manager in charge of growth at Facebook. She says Facebook's future is on mobile devices, the medium by which most people will experience the Web in coming years. Facebook now works on more than 2,500 different phones, helping it gain a foothold in emerging markets. And it is forging relationships with mobile phone operators around the world.

Gleit's 150-member team has boots on the ground in far-flung places armed with low-tech phones and cheap data plans. Even team members here carry Nokia phones alongside their iPhones to update their status or check their News Feed.

"We originally built a product for ourselves," Gleit said. "This is different. Now we need to understand the experience of users who are not like us."

Analysts say Facebook already has established an impressive track record of uprooting entrenched competitors. In Britain, it displaced the dominant social network Bebo, forcing AOL to sell it at a huge loss. In Germany, Facebook overtook the homegrown StudiVZ. Facebook even broke Google social network Orkut's stranglehold on Brazil and India.

In 2009, it launched a clever tool to help Facebook users find their Orkut friends on Facebook and instantly send them friend requests. Two years later it swiped Google's top executive in Latin America, Alexandre Hohagen. Facebook sprinted ahead of Orkut one year ago, and now has 61 million active users in Latin America's largest country.

Facebook is treating India as a test lab for how it can spread in other emerging markets such as Indonesia. Facebook, which has offices in Hyderabad, India, has grown from 8 million users in 2010 to 65 million users today. It is aggressively targeting India's youth. A few hundred young Indian programmers recently jammed a Facebook hackathon at a Bangalore convention center to chug chai and brainstorm new apps that would appeal to their friends.

But Facebook has its eyes on a much bigger prize beyond the country's 100 million Internet users: the 900 million-plus Indians on mobile phones. Some analysts predict India will have more Facebook users than any other country including the United States by 2015.

The company also faces significant challenges in India. It must make the service captivating on low-tech mobile phones with unreliable Internet connections and it must gingerly navigate demands from the Indian government to remove objectionable content without alienating users.

Facebook is making some of its biggest moves in Russia, South Korea and Japan, the only major markets where it operates but has penetration of less than 50%, according to research firm ComScore.

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South L.A. frustrated by delays in building new King hospital

Earlier this year, Joane Austin rushed her elderly mother to the emergency room for fear she was having a heart attack.

Austin normally would have made the short trip to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the landmark hospital in South Los Angeles. But King/Drew has been closed for five years, so Austin drove several miles to the emergency room at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood.

"I prayed all the lights would stay green," she said. "It was scary."

Once they arrived, doctors determined that Austin's mother needed emergency surgery to remove scar tissue around her intestines.

For years, King/Drew provided emergency, trauma and inpatient care to residents from throughout South Los Angeles. After a series of medical errors resulted in patient deaths, Los Angeles County closed it in 2007. County officials promised the community a better, safer new medical center in a few years.

But the opening has been repeatedly delayed, and the community is still waiting. Originally, officials hoped to have the new facility ready by 2010. Then it was pushed to 2012. Now, officials say they plan to have construction completed next year and the hospital opening its doors in 2014.

Without a nearby hospital, patients have had to travel to such places as Bellflower, Inglewood and Long Beach for emergency room and inpatient care.

Several local hospitals — California Hospital Medical Center, L.A. County/USC Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center — received an influx of former King patients after the closure. The closest hospital, St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, reported an increase of 20% to 30% in emergency room visits since King/Drew closed, though other factors also may have contributed to the rise.

Getting to other hospitals has presented a challenge for many in the low-income neighborhood, said William Hobson, president and chief executive of the Watts Healthcare Corp. "Just the fact that it is a long way away may discourage them from going," he said.

The closure of King/Drew, which was born out of the Watts riots and opened in 1972, created a healthcare gap in a community where rates of chronic disease are high and vast swaths of the population lack insurance, said David Carlisle, president of the adjacent Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. South Los Angeles has a shortage of doctors, inpatient beds and outpatient services, according to both experts and research.

Despite King/Drew's many medical lapses, which earned it the nickname "Killer King," many in the community remained fiercely loyal to the hospital and the services it provided.

Studies examining the impact of King/Drew's closure found that it led to delays in care for elderly blacks and Latinos and a dramatic increase in patient admissions at other trauma centers. Physicians throughout the county also reported more overcrowding in other emergency rooms and said they saw sicker patients who didn't know where to go or couldn't afford transportation elsewhere.

"It is fearful to think about how many lives may have been saved had this thing been opened by now," said Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of the advocacy group Community Health Councils. "It shouldn't take five years to build a facility."

Patrick Wooten, 49, went to St. Francis when he had a dislocated kneecap a few years ago. Wooten, who is uninsured, said he received good care at the private hospital but then got a $3,200 bill. Wooten said he is frustrated that the new King hospital still hasn't opened and won't until 2014. "What you do until then, God only knows," he said. "Hopefully we can wait it out."

Last year, Sandira Gonzalez, 29, took her 5-year-old son to the Martin Luther King urgent care center when he had a fever. But when the center closed for the night, her son had to be taken by ambulance to Harbor-UCLA near Torrance, where he was treated for an infection.

Community members and advocates said they are disappointed by the long wait, caused by a combination of bureaucratic delays and the complexity of the project. But when it does open, they said, they are hopeful that it will be a better, and safer, hospital.

The county is building the hospital and will help support it financially but will not be responsible for day-to-day operations. Instead, an independent, nonprofit organization will run the facility, to be known as Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, and the University of California will help staff it and ensure the quality of patient care. Construction is progressing, but the grand opening may still be nearly two years away.

"It will be a significantly different kind of institution, with the right kind of accountability," said Robert K. Ross, president and chief executive of the California Endowment. "Now we just need the institution to open up on budget and on time."

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said it takes time to create a state-of-the-art hospital — and a whole medical complex — that could become a model for others around the nation. "A lot of eyes are on this," he said. "We want to do this well and we want to do it right.... Nothing else is acceptable."

The nonprofit's board recognizes how critical the facility is to the area, said board President Manny Abascal. "Every day this hospital is not open, people are suffering," he said. At the same time, he added, the board is committed to ensuring that the new hospital is a high-quality institution. "If you open it … and there are some of the same problems you had before, then it's going to be devastating," he said.

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Glen Campbell considering more live shows in 2013

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Glen Campbell may be wrapping up a goodbye tour but that doesn't mean he's done with the stage.

Campbell is considering scheduling more shows next year after playing more than 120 dates in 2012.

The 76-year-old singer has Alzheimer's disease and has begun to lose his memory. He put out his final studio album, "Ghost on the Canvas," in 2011 and embarked on the tour with family members and close friends serving in his band and staffing the tour.

Campbell's longtime manager Stan Schneider said in a phone interview from Napa, Calif., where the tour wrapped for the year Friday night, that recent West Coast shows have been some of the singer's strongest. Campbell will break for the holidays and if he still feels strong he'll begin scheduling more shows.

___

Online:

http://glencampbellmusic.com

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