parsing "&A" in a string..

[bruce]

Hi.

a pretty simple question, i'm guessing.

i have a text/html string that looks like:
....(A&E)

the issue i have is that when i parse it using xpath/node/toString,
i get the following

....(A&E;).

note the semicolon ";". I've tried to use the encoding function of toString
with no luck..

the test chunk of code i'm using is:
..
..
..
dpath="//div/ul[@id='leftNavLis ting']/li[position()>0]//a/text()"
ldepts_=d.xpath (dpath)
if len(ldepts_)>0:
for ldept in ldepts_:
dept=ldept.node Value
print "dept =",ldept.toStri ng()
start=re.search ("\(",dept).spa n()
end=re.search(" \)",dept).span( )
print start,end
print dept[start[0]],dept[end[0]]
dept=dept[start[1]:end[0]]
print dept
..
..
..

so, any thoughts/pointers as to how i can remove the ";" would be helpful.
i'm assuming that there is a way to enforce a given encoding, that would
remove the ";" issue...

thanks