India Ink: Air Pollution in New Delhi Was Much Worse Than Beijing Thursday, But Indian Government Is Not Acting

Manish Swarup/Associated Press A thick blanket of smog over New Delhi on Thursday morning.

NEW DELHI—Beijing’s air pollution has reached such toxic levels recently that the Chinese government is finally acknowledging the problem – and acting on it.

But in New Delhi on Thursday, air pollution levels far exceeded those in Beijing, only without any government acknowledgement or action. It is not the first time pollution in India’s capital has outpaced that in China.

The level of tiny particulates known as PM 2.5, which lodge deep in the lungs and can enter the bloodstream, was over 400 micrograms per cubic meter in various neighborhoods in and around Delhi Thursday, according to a real-time air quality monitor. That compared to Beijing’s most-recent air quality reading of 172 micrograms per cubic meter. (The “Air Quality online” link to the left of the Delhi website gives you real-time monitoring of Delhi’s pollution levels.)

At the University of Delhi’s northern campus at 12:30 p.m., the reading for PM 2.5 was 402 micrograms per cubic meter; in the eastern suburb of Noida it was 411; at the Indira Gandhi International airport it was 421.

Beijing’s government on Wednesday introduced emergency measures to curb pollution, ordering cars off the roads and factories to shut down, and warning citizens to avoid activity outside. The measures came after two straight days that the readings were higher than 300, a level the United States Environmental Protection Agency considers “hazardous.”

The forecast for Delhi’s air pollution Friday is “critical,” according to the Ministry of Earth Sciences. So far, though, Delhi’s government has made no announcements about the city’s air pollution, nor introduced any emergency measures, a spokesman for chief minister’s office said. Sheila Dikshit, the chief minister, said in an interview in December that the city could not keep up with the factors that cause air pollution.

Beijing’s air quality is so bad that living there is like living in a smoking lounge, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The levels of air pollution Bloomberg cited as Beijing’s average were half that of New Delhi early Thursday afternoon.

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Dr. Phil says Manti Te’o hoaxer admits to love for linebacker

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A California man who has admitted to fabricating Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te‘o’s fake girlfriend in an elaborate hoax told talk show host Phil McGraw he felt a deep romantic love for the football player, McGraw said on Wednesday.

“Here we have a young man that fell deeply, romantically in love,” McGraw told the television morning show “Today” to discuss his two part interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, which will air on “Dr. Phil” on Thursday and Friday.

“I asked him straight up, ‘Was this a romantic relationship with you?,’ and he says yes. I said, ‘Are you then therefore gay?’ And he said, ‘When you put it that way, yes.’ And then he caught himself and said, ‘I am confused,’” McGraw told “Today.”

Te’o has said in a previous media interview he is not gay.

The fake girlfriend hoax involving Te’o, who was a finalist for college football’s highest individual honor the Heisman trophy, caused a sensation when it was revealed earlier this month on news website Deadspin.com.

Tuiasosopo says he played the part over the phone of Lennay Kekua, the fictitious woman who was Te’o's girlfriend in the hoax. Te’o, 22, had spoken about the woman in media interviews, and reports described her surviving a car accident and then dying of leukemia in September.

Te’o has said since the hoax was exposed that he was the victim of an elaborate prank, that he never met Kekua and that his acquaintance Tuiasosopo admitted to him that he was the one who played the part of Lennay.

Dr. Phil said in a segment on “Today” on Wednesday that after an extensive interview with Tuiasosopo, he believes Te’o had no role in creating the hoax.

“Absolutely, unequivocally, no,” McGraw said, in pinning the blame for the scheme on Tuiasosopo.

The NBC morning program also showed some comments Tuiasosopo made in his interview for the “Dr. Phil” daytime program.

“There are many times where Manti and Lennay had broken up,” Tuiasosopo told “Dr. Phil.”

“But something would bring them back together, whether it was something going on in his life or in Lennay’s life, in this case in my life,” Tuiasosopo said.

Tuiasosopo, 22, is from southern California and played high school football in 2005 at Antelope Valley High north of Los Angeles, according to media reports. Tuaisosopo’s attorney had previously told reporters his client was behind the hoax.

Before the hoax was exposed, a photo of a woman who was described as Lennay Kekua was presented in media reports about Te’o and his struggles to overcome her death and that of his grandmother, who actually did pass away.

But the photo of Kekua was taken from a Facebook profile of a California woman who said she was unaware of the scheme, according to Deadspin.com.

Te’o told Katie Couric in a broadcast of her show “Katie” last week that he received a telephone call from the person claiming to be Kekua on December 6 – two days before the Heisman presentation. But he said he was not really certain she never existed until Tuiasosopo’s later confession to him.

The linebacker, during the Katie Couric interview, presented a voice mail he received from the person he said he thought was Kekua. “Doesn’t that sound like a girl?” Te’o told Couric.

Te’o also told Couric he is not gay. “No, far from it,” he said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Andrew Hay)

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American Idol Discovers Big Talent in Texas and California

TV Watch

American Idol

By Jamie Bufalino

01/30/2013 at 11:00 PM EST

From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban

Michael Becker/FOX.

It's the final week of American Idol's cross-country talent search. And as the judges head to San Antonio, Texas, a surprising lack of diva-on-diva trash-talking allowed the focus to fall squarely on the contestants who seemed like they could be serious contenders this season (or at least keep things interesting).

Case in point: 19-year-old Mississippi native Papa Peachez who described himself as "a cute little white boy and ... so much more than that. I'm really just a big black woman trapped in a trapped in a little boy's body."

After Peachez belted out an original song, Nicki Minaj immediately showed him some love. "I think that you are a superstar," she said. The other judges weren't as convinced, but Minaj managed to twist enough arms (not literally) to get the boy through to Hollywood.

Peachez is going to have some steep competition from another 19-year-old – San Antonio's Adam Sanders, who blew away the judges with his rendition of the Etta James classic "At Last."

"You shocked us all, Dawg," Randy Jackson told the singer before giving him a standing ovation along with Mariah Carey and Keith Urban.

Other notables from the Lone Star State included an Arkansas beauty queen, a vibrant mariachi singer and 16-year-old Senni M'mairura, whose rendition of the Jackson 5's "Who's Lovin You" drew raves and left Minaj sputtering about other things that apparently make her feel good: "Candy canes, strawberries, whip cream, rainbows and sunny skies," she said.

Next the judges hopped aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif., to see what the West Coast had to offer. That's where Jesaiah Baer, 16, had to contend with an impromptu fire drill but still managed to blaze her way to Hollywood.

Then, after an emotional number from Iraq war veteran Matt Farmer, the episode ended with two powerful stories from young, would-be Idols who've overcome bullying.

Briana Oakley, 16, had to change schools after her classmates turned on her when she found success on a televised talent show. But she won the judges over with her performance Patty Griffin's "Up to the Mountain."

And 21-year-old Matheus Fernandes, who was quite a bit shorter than everyone else in the room, broke down in tears after getting praise from the judges for his version of "A Change Is Gonna Come."

"To me," Randy told him, "You're 10 feet tall."

Thursday American Idol heads to Oklahoma – and next week to Hollywood.

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Sex to burn calories? Authors expose obesity myths

Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.

All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.

Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting from real solutions to the nation's weight problems.

"The evidence is what matters," and many feel-good ideas repeated by well-meaning health experts just don't have it, said the lead author, David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Independent researchers say the authors have some valid points. But many of the report's authors also have deep financial ties to food, beverage and weight-loss product makers — the disclosures take up half a page of fine print in the journal.

"It raises questions about what the purpose of this paper is" and whether it's aimed at promoting drugs, meal replacement products and bariatric surgery as solutions, said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition and food studies.

"The big issues in weight loss are how you change the food environment in order for people to make healthy choices," such as limits on soda sizes and marketing junk food to children, she said. Some of the myths they cite are "straw men" issues, she said.

But some are pretty interesting.

Sex, for instance. Not that people do it to try to lose weight, but claims that it burns 100 to 300 calories are common, Allison said. Yet the only study that scientifically measured the energy output found that sex lasted six minutes on average — "disappointing, isn't it?" — and burned a mere 21 calories, about as much as walking, he said.

That's for a man. The study was done in 1984 and didn't measure the women's experience.

Among the other myths or assumptions the authors cite, based on their review of the most rigorous studies on each topic:

—Small changes in diet or exercise lead to large, long-term weight changes. Fact: The body adapts to changes, so small steps to cut calories don't have the same effect over time, studies suggest. At least one outside expert agrees with the authors that the "small changes" concept is based on an "oversimplified" 3,500-calorie rule, that adding or cutting that many calories alters weight by one pound.

—School gym classes have a big impact on kids' weight. Fact: Classes typically are not long, often or intense enough to make much difference.

—Losing a lot of weight quickly is worse than losing a little slowly over the long term. Fact: Although many dieters regain weight, those who lose a lot to start with often end up at a lower weight than people who drop more modest amounts.

—Snacking leads to weight gain. Fact: No high quality studies support that, the authors say.

—Regularly eating breakfast helps prevent obesity. Fact: Two studies found no effect on weight and one suggested that the effect depended on whether people were used to skipping breakfast or not.

—Setting overly ambitious goals leads to frustration and less weight loss. Fact: Some studies suggest people do better with high goals.

Some things may not have the strongest evidence for preventing obesity but are good for other reasons, such as breastfeeding and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, the authors write. And exercise helps prevent a host of health problems regardless of whether it helps a person shed weight.

"I agree with most of the points" except the authors' conclusions that meal replacement products and diet drugs work for battling obesity, said Dr. David Ludwig, a prominent obesity research with Boston Children's Hospital who has no industry ties. Most weight-loss drugs sold over the last century had to be recalled because of serious side effects, so "there's much more evidence of failure than success," he said.

___

Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Trial begins for Moreno Valley school board member Mike Rios

The young woman on the witness stand said Mike Rios approached her on the street with a school district business card and a job opportunity: He wanted her "to gather girls and sell them," she said.

Identified in court only as Valery, she testified Wednesday that she and others worked as prostitutes for Rios, a member of the Moreno Valley Unified School District Board of Education.

Valery's testimony came on the opening day of Rios' trial in Riverside County Superior Court. He faces 35 felony charges, including rape, pandering and pimping involving six females, two of them underage.

Valery, 21, with long black hair and bangs covering her forehead, bit her lip between questions. In addition to working as a prostitute for Rios, she said, she helped recruit other young women for him.

"He told me we had to get the best-looking girls so we could get more money for them," Valery said.

Prosecutors allege that Rios ran a prostitution ring out of his Moreno Valley home in 2011 and 2012. In opening statements, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Brusselback told the jury: "This is a case about greed. This is a case about money. This is a case about power."

Rios was "constantly trying to recruit new, young talent," Brusselback said.

Rios' attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael J. Micallef, told jurors that Rios ran a business involving women stripping, dancing and performing for money but that it "had nothing to do with sex."

The women were free to do whatever they wanted and what they did besides stripping and dancing "wasn't necessarily known to Mr. Rios," Micallef said. Networking with women and growing his business was "the capitalist way," Micallef said.

Rios, 42, was arrested in February on attempted murder charges after he allegedly shot at two people near his home. He was released on bail but was arrested again in April on suspicion of rape, pimping and using his position on the school board to recruit would-be prostitutes.

He was released on bail again and has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in both cases.

While searching Rios' home after the alleged shooting, investigators found numerous cellphones and several condoms in the glove box of the Mercedes-Benz in his garage, testified Paul Grotefend, a Riverside County sheriff's deputy.

Prosecutors say Rios recruited women, took provocative photos of them in his home and posted the photos in online advertisements. He allegedly established a cellphone number solely for the prostitution work, drove the women to various locations to have sex and split the money they earned.

It is alleged that three adult women worked for him as prostitutes and that he attempted to recruit another adult woman and two minors.

On Wednesday, prosecutors showed jurors online advertisements with erotic photos of Valery in lingerie that she said were taken in Rios' bedroom.

Some of the ads read: "Sexy hot beautiful Latina babe Here 4 U."

Valery testified that Rios, on numerous occasions, picked her up from her home in downtown Los Angeles and brought her to his house. He bought her condoms before she met clients, she testified.

When Valery stopped communicating with Rios, he sent her text messages telling her how many missed calls there were on the cellphone he set up for prostitution, she said.

"He assumed every call that came in was a guaranteed customer," she said.

Rios is accused of raping two women, one of whom was intoxicated.

After both arrests last year, Rios returned to the five-member school board.

Though the other school board members passed a resolution calling for Rios to resign, he refused, said board Vice President Tracey B. Vackar. The board cannot remove Rios unless he is convicted, Vackar said.

Rios continues to come to board meetings, Vackar said, and even attended a board study session Tuesday night after a court appearance. Though there was disappointment after he did not resign, Rios has been treated with respect at meetings and "has not been disruptive," Vackar said.

The trial is expected to continue Thursday. The case involving the attempted murder charges — which is separate from the current case — is pending trial, with the next court date scheduled for February.

Rios, wearing a blue suit, was quiet in court Wednesday, sitting next to his attorney with his hands folded.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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French Forces Pressing Mali Campaign Seize Rebel Stronghold

BAMAKO, Mali — French troops took control overnight of the airport at the last major northern Mali town still in rebel hands, officials said on Wednesday, after Islamist militants abandoned two other principal settlements in the vast, desert region where residents’ relief and elation has given way to some measure of reprisal and frustration.

A French military spokesman in Paris, Col. Thierry Burkhard, said French troops reached the airport at Kidal, in the remote northeast of Mali, in an ongoing operation that is ongoing.

Haminy Maiga, a local official, told news agencies that French forces met no resistance when they arrived aboard four airplanes that landed late on Tuesday. France also sent helicopters, he said.

Kidal is the capital of a desert region of the same name. Secular Tuareg rebels claim to be in control of the town after Islamists fled. A newly formed Islamist splinter group that broke with the main Ansar Dine Islamist force also claims to have a power base there.

The new group calls itself the Islamic Movement for the Azawad and is led by Alghabass Ag Intalla, a prominent leader of the Tuareg ethnic group from the Kidal region who has said he wants to negotiate a settlement with the central government in Bamako, 800 miles to the southwest. Azawad is a Tuareg term for northern Mali.

Mali has been in turmoil since early 2012, when junior officers in the south staged a coup to protest the government’s tepid response to an uprising in the north by Tuareg separatists who were subsequently pushed to the side by Islamic extremists bent on imposing an extreme form of Shariah law.

Earlier this month, the Islamists suddenly advanced toward the capital, threatening to engulf the south, topple the weak central government and destabilize a vast area of northern Africa.

After a series of punishing French airstrikes in recent days, French and Malian troops launched a lightning campaign on the ground, entering the northern towns of Gao and Timbuktu as Islamist rebels seemed to melted away to far-flung hide-outs, possibly in the Kidal Province.

In Gao, groups of residents were reported on Tuesday to be hunting down suspected fighters who had not fled ahead of the French-Malian military forces who took control of the town over the weekend. Other residents expressed concern that Gao remained unsafe and was acutely short of food and fuel after a prolonged isolation.

“The city is free, but I think the areas close by are still dangerous,” said Mahamane Touré, a Gao resident reached by telephone from Bamako, the capital. “These guys are out there.”

Mr. Touré, who spent the evening watching soccer on television and listening to music with friends, said that although everyone was enjoying the new freedoms, the legacy of Islamist occupation was evident in the hardship of everyday life.

“The price of gasoline is almost double, and the price of food is very high,” Mr. Touré said. “There are still things in the market, but no one has any money and there is no aid.”

Reporters and photographers in Timbuktu, the storied desert oasis farther north that the French-Malian forces secured on Monday, saw looters pillaging shops and other businesses, with some saying the merchants were mainly Arabs, Mauritanians and Algerians who had supported the Islamist radicals who summarily executed, stoned and mutilated people they suspected of being nonbelievers during their 10-month occupation.

Alex Crawford, a television correspondent for Britain’s Sky News, said, “This is months and months of frustration and repression finally erupting.”

The rapidly shifting developments came less than three weeks into the military effort led by France, the former colonial power whose helicopters and warplanes began arriving here at the Malian government’s invitation on Jan. 11. Since then other West African countries have started to send troops. Britain is preparing to send more than 300 military trainers, and the United States is providing aerial cargo and refueling help.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said that as of Tuesday 17 sorties by United States Air Force C-17 cargo jets had flown 500 French troops and 390 tons of equipment into Bamako. In addition, there has been one aerial refueling operation by an American KC-135 tanker aircraft, which provided 33,000 pounds of fuel to several French warplanes, the officials said.

At the same time, a meeting of international donors was getting under way on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as part of an effort to provide more than $450 million in long-term financing for the military intervention in Mali.

The French-led effort has met surprisingly little resistance from the array of Islamist militias that occupied the northern part of Mali, an area about twice the size of Germany, in the spring of 2012 in the midst of a national political crisis.

It remains unclear how long the foreign military occupation will last. Most of the Islamist fighters have melted into the desert and could be regrouping to fight again.

In a bid to consolidate the gains, troops from Mali and neighboring Niger arrived Tuesday in the small town of Ansongo, about 50 miles south of Gao, one day after President François Hollande of France urged African countries to take a more prominent role in the operations.

Just as in Gao two days before, residents filled the streets there to greet the arrival of the African troops as they toured Ansongo and its environs.

“Everyone is very, very, very happy,” said Ibrahim Haidara, an Ansongo resident reached by phone. “They chanted, ‘Vive la France!’ and ‘Long live African armies!’ ”

But like his counterparts in Gao, he worried that the fighters might not have gone very far.

“They are in the bush. They are hiding,” he said. “One must be careful.”

Peter Tinti reported from Bamako, Rick Gladstone from New York, and Alan Cowell from London. Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris, John F. Burns from London, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington.

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Facebook Graph Search Still Doesn’t Speak Human

Despite hiring a couple of linguists to get its new search engine to move “beyond ‘Robospeak” and actually understand how people talk, Facebook hasn’t actually taught Graph Search how to do that very well just yet. And that’s a problem, no matter which way the social network spins it. Unlike Google‘s pattern-matching search engine, Facebook’s new recommendation-based social search platform tries to understand full sentences. And that takes context, something that’s very hard to teach even the smartest computers, as one of the linguists that worked on the project, Amy Campbell, told The New York Times‘s Somini Sengupta. 

RELATED: Why Facebook’s Graph Search Can’t Give Users What They’re Looking for… Yet

In order to think more like a person the Graph Search team taught the engine 25 synonyms for “student” so that when someone types in “Stanford Academics that work at Facebook” the engine knows to look for “students” — 275,000 different ways in fact. But it turns out that an English class isn’t the future of machine learning: a grammar and vocabulary lesson proves a lot easier than complex sentient thoughts, and that’s where Facebook’s new product breaks down in practice.

RELATED: Why Google Isn’t Scared of Facebook’s Graph Search

For example, Graph Search doesn’t get vague pronouns. My query today for “photos Elle Reeve likes that she commented on” confuses Facebook’s beyond-robo engine. Instead, Graph Search results track down photos that my Atlantic Wire colleague “likes” but that I commented on:

RELATED: The Bad News-Good News of Tech Trademark Infringement

But Facebook’s ambiguity problem extends beyond “I” and “she.” Graph Search also has problems with double entendres, or sentences with nuance. The phrase “sports fans that like Lady Gaga play” has multiple meanings, notes the Times, especially because the word “fan” has its own special meaning on Facebook. (People with “Pages” have “fans.”) 

It’s not impossible to fix these specific issues. Facebook can add more relevant “context” to Graph Search as more people use it (beta testing rolled out over the last week). But never once has a machine perfectly understood our natural language. IBM’s Watson has come close, but it still made an embarrassing mistake every so often, and newer robots like Georgia Tech’s Simon are still getting there. Messups are okay (and entertaining) for a computer on a gameshow, or robots that might end up really helping bridge the computer-human divide. But, if I’m really going to use Graph Search as a way to find things in my day-to-day life, right now, those kind of hiccups should happen rarely to never — and Facebook’s slow phase-in excuse isn’t cutting it. If Graph Search can’t understand what humans want, it’s simply not doing its job. 

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Ashley Judd Splits from Husband Dario Franchitti

01/29/2013 at 08:05 PM EST

Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti

Robin Marchant/Wireimage

Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti are splitting after more than a decade of marriage.

"We have mutually decided to end our marriage. We'll always be family and continue to cherish our relationship based on the special love, integrity, and respect we have always enjoyed," Judd, 44, and Franchitti, 39, tell PEOPLE exclusively in a statement on Tuesday.

After being engaged for about two years, the Missing star and the racecar driver tied the knot in a highly private ceremony in Scotland in 2001.

Judd's sister, Wynonna Judd, served as maid of honor, while the groom's brother Mario was the best man. – Julie Jordan

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Slain doctor remembered for faith and zest for life

He was remembered by patients and colleagues as a caring and talented physician, one who followed his father's footsteps into medicine. And his friends spoke of how devout he was in his Jewish faith as well as of his kindness and his zest for life.

"He was just a good soul," one colleague and friend said.

Now police are trying to determine why someone would walk into the urologist's Newport Beach offices and shoot him to death.

Dr. Ronald Gilbert was killed Monday in an exam room of his practice in the heart of a bustling medical community, allegedly gunned down by a 75-year-old retired barber who recently told a neighbor that he had cancer and didn't expect to live much longer.

Stanwood Fred Elkus of Lake Elsinore was arrested within seven minutes of the first call from the medical offices next to Hoag Memorial Hospital, authorities said. Elkus, who is being held on $1-million bail and is expected to be in court Wednesday, was described by neighbors as having problems with his prostate and undergoing surgeries. He recently told a neighbor that he believed he would soon be dead.

One neighbor, Sherry Martin, said that Elkus would always ride through his Riverside County neighborhood on his bike, wearing a baseball cap. Sometimes, he offered to give haircuts to neighbors.

But Elkus had run-ins with other neighbors in the past, including a dispute over bushes in a woman's backyard that was exacerbated into more than a year of Elkus allegedly taunting her family. Melissa Evans, 36, said that he would pass by on his bike or in his car, staring them down, or would harass their dog late at night.

"He just couldn't let it go," she said. "He couldn't let go of something so small."

Evans said the erratic behavior was so unsettling that she, her husband and three sons moved to a community 10 miles away. But even after they moved to Wildomar, she said, he was spotted driving by their new home about three months ago.

Gilbert's death, however, has prompted a different sort of reaction: an outpouring of warm memories and shock at his violent death.

Colleagues said Gilbert, 52, had an "impeccable" reputation, having worked as the chief of urology at Hoag Hospital from 1998 to 2002 and as a volunteer faculty member at UC Irvine's Medical School, from which he graduated in 1987. His research interests included sexual dysfunction and bladder and prostate cancer.

He had also developed a spray designed to treat premature ejaculation. Dr. Eugene Rhee, president of the California Urological Assn., said Gilbert was especially proud of that work. "It was a much-needed medication," Rhee said.

Bruce Sechler, 61, had been Gilbert's patient for about seven years. "Right off the bat," the Huntington Beach resident said, "he could put you at ease and make you feel like he was genuinely concerned about you as a person and your needs."

Gerry Crews, a close friend who had known Gilbert since their high school days in Whittier, said that he knew how to have fun too, and loved classic rock. He sang in a garage band with Crews' older brother in high school. But he also had a laser focus during his undergraduate years at UC Santa Barbara so that he could achieve his ambition of becoming a doctor like his father.

"I was not a hard worker in college; he was," Crews, 51, said. "From the start, he planned to go to medical school and he worked very hard to get into medical school."

Even with his focus on medicine, friends recalled that he had a unique ability to keep an open and balanced life. He held on to a deep appreciation for music, and would have jam sessions with his sons, who played guitar and drums. He also traveled and snow-skied.

Faith had also been a pillar in his life, friends say, influencing his choices and how he approached the world.

Crews said he moved from Tustin — where his old friends lived nearby — to Huntington Harbour so that he could be closer to his synagogue and walk there on the Sabbath. He had also retrofitted his kitchen to prepare kosher meals. And his oldest son had recently been living in Israel.

"On Saturdays," Gilbert's neighbor Betty Combs recalled, "they dressed to the nines and walked to synagogue."

Those who knew him also said he had built up a stable of friends over the years because he was willing to share his time and knowledge. Crews remembered him being a source of support on the two times his wife had breast cancer.

"He was generous of himself," said Tom Mayer, a longtime friend and a registered nurse who once worked at Hoag Hospital. "He gave you everything."

When he heard of a shooting at the Newport Beach medical campus, Mayer, 49, drove straight there from work in Mission Viejo, still dressed in his scrubs. He had called and texted Gilbert, but there was no reply. The next day, he recalled the impact Gilbert's unconditional friendship had on his life.

"He was a light," Mayer said. "He was someone who could be turned to, just to talk.... My life wouldn't be the same if I never met Ron."

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

rick.rojas@latimes.com

Times Community News staff writers Jill Cowan and Lauren Williams contributed to this report.

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India Ink: Delhi Gang Rape Trial Will Be Held in Delhi, Supreme Court Rules

NEW DELHI —India’s Supreme Court dismissed on procedural grounds a plea on Tuesday to transfer the New Delhi gang rape trial outside the city.

Advocate M.L. Sharma filed the petition on behalf of Mukesh Singh, one of the five men accused of the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus last month. The petition claimed that press coverage of the trial and continued agitations had created bias against the accused.

The petition also said that “personal interest shown by the chief minister as well as various cabinet ministers” in the case would cause the judiciary to be “under pressure to work against the petitioner.” Since the crime occurred, the chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit, and other government figures have pledged to make the city safer for women.

The plea to move the trial out of Delhi was dismissed because of questions raised about Mr. Sharma’s authority to represent the accused, rather than on the substance of the plea.

The Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir, said in dismissing the plea, “Your authority to appear in this matter has been totally denied by the accused.”

Mr. Sharma and a second lawyer, V.K. Anand, have both claimed to be representing Mr. Singh. The Supreme Court rejected the plea following an investigation that determined that Mr. Singh was actually represented by advocate V.K. Anand.

The five men accused in the Dec. 16 fatal gang rape are being tried in a fast track court in the Saket District Court Complex in New Delhi. They could face the death penalty if convicted of murder. On Monday, the Indian Juvenile Justice Board declared that a sixth person accused in the case was officially a juvenile, meaning the maximum sentence he could receive is three years in a detention facility.

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