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The drivers have been convicted of child exploitation, identity theft, manslaughter and driving under the influence, according to court records. Each offense would make them ineligible for a city of Los Angeles taxi permit. The criminal histories recently came to light when a representative of the taxi industry presented a city official with a binder containing citations and court records for eight Uber drivers who were cited for minor violations at the airport over the last 18 months.

Excerpt: Yes, you can get a ticket for driving while wearing the new eyewear-like Google Glass wearable computer, which is now being tested nationwide for possible entry into the consumer market. Cecilia Abadie, 44, who lives in Temecula and works at a golf store in San Diego, got just such a ticket Tuesday night after being stopped for speeding by a California Highway Patrol officer. Quickly, Abadie posted a note on the Internet: "A cop just stopped me and gave me a ticket for wearing Google Glass while driving! ... Is Google Glass illegal while driving or is this cop...

Facebook is becoming a major factor in marriage breakdowns and is increasingly being used as a source of evidence in divorce cases, according to lawyers. The social networking site was cited as a reason for a third of divorces last year in which unreasonable behaviour was a factor, according to law firm Divorce-Online. The firm said it had seen a 50 per cent jump in the number of behaviour-based divorce petitions that contained the word ‘Facebook’ in the past two years.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The push to produce more ethanol in Minnesota has come with a cost to the environment. Five ethanol plants in Minnesota have paid nearly $3 million in the past year for violating air and water quality standards. For example, Buffalo Lake Energy in Fairmont was fined for producing ethanol without a wastewater treatment system permit from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Another plant illegally discharged wastewater into a creek. Several have failed to regularly monitor emissions and discharges.

Indianapolis, IN -- A Planned Parenthood abortion business in Indianapolis, Indiana received a reprimand months ago over improperly filed abortion reports to the state health department. News of the reprimand, against a Planned Parenthood center that recently was accused of covering up sexual abuse, only surfaced recently.

MIAMI - Miscommunication led to the detainment of three men at the Port of Miami on Sunday after authorities became suspicious of their documentation and the contents of their cargo truck, officials said. Authorities initially said the men — two Iraqis and one Lebanese national who are legal permanent U.S. residents — had been caught trying to slip past a checkpoint at the port's entrance. A port security officer became suspicious when the truck driver could not produce proper paperwork in a routine inspection to enter the port about 8 a.m., Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Nancy Goldberg said. The driver also...

WASHINGTON - Military recruiters have increasingly resorted to overly aggressive tactics and even criminal activity to attract young troops to the battlefield, congressional investigators say. Grueling combat conditions in Iraq, a decent commercial job market and tough monthly recruiting goals have made recruiters' jobs more difficult, the Government Accountability Office said Monday. This has probably prompted more recruiters to resort to strong-arm tactics, including harassment or criminal means such as falsifying documents, to satisfy demands, GAO states. The report was done at the behest of lawmakers who were concerned that not enough was being done to curb aggressive recruitment practices....

MANHATTAN BEACH -- Trying to fire up a lackluster crowd at a "get out the vote" rally, City Councilman Jim Aldinger asked who would be working over the weekend to get Californians to the polls on Tuesday. Only a handful of the 80 activists raised their hands at the rally Thursday for gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. Campaign consultants reported similarly tepid responses from volunteers around the state -- even though an expected low voter turnout and an extremely tight gubernatorial primary could make this year's "get out the vote" efforts more decisive than in past statewide campaigns. Secretary of State...

BOULDER, Colo. - An investigation of a professor who likened some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi found serious cases of misconduct in his academic research, a University of Colorado spokesman said Tuesday. One member of the five-person investigative committee recommended that ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill be fired, and four recommended he be suspended, university spokesman Barrie Hartman said. Churchill has denied doing anything wrong. He said earlier Tuesday that he had yet to see the report. University officials had earlier determined Churchill could not be fired for his comments about the terrorist attacks, but they launched an inquiry...

NEW YORK - An important wind circulation pattern over the Pacific Ocean has begun to weaken because of global warming caused by human activity, something that could alter climate and the marine food chain in the region, new research suggests. It's not clear what climate changes might arise in the area or possibly beyond, but the long-term effect might resemble some aspects of an El Nino event, a study author said. El Ninos boost rainfall in the southern United States and western South America and bring dry weather or even drought to Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere in the western Pacific....

WASHINGTON - A batch of 278 e-mails between lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a Bush administration official show a highly inappropriate relationship where gifts and business interests mixed freely and frequently, federal prosecutors said Friday. The prosecutors hope to use the e-mails in the criminal case against David Safavian, who is accused of lying and obstruction of justice in connection with investigations of an Abramoff-sponsored golf outing to Scotland in August 2002. The e-mails show that Abramoff and Safavian, then chief of staff at the General Services Administration, were in frequent contact, played golf often and traded workplace gossip. Abramoff showered...

It's a widespread belief, one reinforced by public officials including President Bush: ``Illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans won't do.'' But it's being challenged in a five-year study that concludes millions of undereducated Americans are without work in a labor market oversaturated by illegal immigrants. Steven Camarota, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors reduced immigration, released the findings Wednesday in Washington, D.C. The study calls into question the theory that America is desperately short of underskilled workers, Camarota said. More importantly, he added, the research concluded that illegal immigration had a direct effect on...

When Laura J. Birkmeyer was officially sworn into office as a Superior Court Judge on Wednesday, she filled the last opening on the local bench. But if state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George gets his ambitious legislative agenda through in the coming year, there could be more slots to fill in San Diego and other state courts. George, the head of the state's judicial branch, is aiming to add more judges to the state courts and increase their pay. There are now 128 state judges in San Diego County, each paid $149,160 per year. He also wants to change...

WASHINGTON - The military's response to Hurricane Katrina was the largest and fastest in U.S. history, but it was hampered by an early disconnect with state and local authorities, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday. Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, said the military should have learned more from its experience in previous natural disasters, including Hurricane Andrew in south Florida in 1992. Communication with state and local authorities in Louisiana and Mississippi was so poor in the hours immediately after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29 that military commanders had to use couriers...

SACRAMENTO -- A group of moderate Democrats, many of them Latino lawmakers from Southern California and the Central Valley, united in the Assembly this week to defeat or significantly weaken a number of bills by fellow Democrats designed to impose new environmental regulations or consumer safeguards. Their success stunned other Democrats and environmental advocates. "This has been one of the worst years I can remember," said Mark Murray, who has been executive director of Californians Against Waste for 11 years. "It's shocking. I thought we had a majority of Democrats, but apparently we don't. ... Environmentalists are not getting any...

California's efforts to bolster its homeland security are uncoordinated and piecemeal, and the agencies in charge are falling behind in using hundreds of millions of dollars in federal anti-terrorism grants, according to an assessment by the Legislative Analyst's Office released Thursday. The analysis found that the state Office of Homeland Security and Department of Health Services have spent only 31 percent of the $869.3 million in federal funds given to the state over the past five years to defend against potential terrorist attacks. The assessment raises uncomfortable questions about the state's vulnerability to attack. "The implication is that we have...

SACRAMENTO -- It's been a roller coaster first term for Democratic Assemblywoman Nicole Parra. When the two-year legislative session ended late last month, she had won credit for passage of a bill to make it easier for parents to check for convicted sex offenders in their neighborhoods by putting the Megan's Law database on the Internet. She was also instrumental in boosting state funding to protect military bases from closure. But she also spent most of the time walking on political eggshells to avoid making mistakes that could be exploited by her Republican challenger in what is expected to be...

Last January, as his presidential campaign was stirring to life, Howard Dean was asked why he had decided to keep nearly half of his records as governor of Vermont under seal until 2013. "Well, there are future political considerations," Dr. Dean told statehouse reporters. "We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor." Dr. Dean now says he was joking about why he invoked executive privilege to keep 145 boxes of his official records — about 47 percent of them — under a 10-year seal. But there is ample evidence in the...

<p>State auditors checking the records of a random sample of 100 city bus drivers have found that more than a quarter of them had criminal histories.</p> <p>The audit also found that 26 of the drivers were never checked for child abuse histories -- in Pennsylvania schools, a mandate for all employees and even some volunteers.</p>

A New York City man became annoyed with a theme park worker dressed as Telly from "Sesame Street" and shoved an umbrella into the worker's stomach, police said. Hiram Cruz, of the Bronx, was cited for disorderly conduct for poking the 17-year-old employee Friday during a visit to Sesame Place outside Philadelphia, police said. The teen complained of minor stomach pain and was taken to a hospital as a precaution, Middletown Sgt. Ken Mellus said. "He felt that Telly was bothering him in some way," Mellus said. "I don't think he was trying to hurt the kid. He thought the...