Applicants

WASHINGTON -- Despite reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev harbored resentment over the U.S. denying his  citizenship application, the application was still pending at the time of the Boston Marathon bombings, a law enforcement source said Sunday.  Tamerlan, 26, filed an application for  citizenship six months ago and immigration officials had not yet made a decision on his case at the time of the Boston Marathon bombings, the source said. Immigration officials were aware of a domestic violence charge on his record and also knew that the FBI had questioned him, the source said, but it's unclear what Tamerlan was told about his prospects for citizenship.

With its giant volume of applications from around the state and world, UCLA is once again the toughest UC campus to crack for students who want to enroll in the fall as a freshman. According to statistics released Thursday, UCLA offered fall 2013 admission to only 17.4% of California residents who applied and to 20.1% of its overall applicants, including those from other states and nations. As it has for several years, UCLA attracted the most freshman applications -- 80,494 this time -- of any public university in the nation, campus officials said.

BrightSource Energy has suspended its application to build a $2.7-billion solar power plant at Hidden Hills, saying it needed to redesign the Inyo County project and the delay would lead to financial uncertainty. With the project nearing final stages of approval from the California Energy Commission, BrightSource considered adding power storage to the 500-megawatt facility. But doing so would trigger another round of time-consuming and costly engineering and environmental analyses.

American companies are so eager to hire highly skilled foreign workers that a cap on new visas has been reached within a matter of days. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Friday that it has received more than 85,000 applications from employers seeking visas for computer programmers, engineers, physicians and other educated workers with specialized skills. Of the total visas, 20,000 are set aside for people with graduate degrees from American universities. Because the 85,000 limit was exceeded within five days of the April 1 opening date, a lottery will be held to distribute the visas.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed to weigh in on college affirmative action for a second time in a year and decide whether Michigan's voters can forbid "preferential treatment" based on race in their state universities. The justices are closely split on whether school officials may ever use race as a factor for deciding who is admitted. A decade ago, the high court, by a 5-4 vote, upheld a limited use of race as a means to achieve classroom diversity in a case from the University of Michigan Law School.

Despite an improving economy, employers are waiting longer to fill job openings in their companies even when they receive many applications to a vacancy. Employers now take an average of 23 business days to hire someone for a position, more than a week longer than the 15 days it took in 2009, according to a study conducted by University of Chicago and University of Maryland economists cited by the New York Times. The news is not exactly new. Corporate profits are soaring, but with millions still out of work and an unemployment rate at 7.9%, companies feel little incentive to give raises or hire new workers.

Nearly half of all California households can now afford the median-priced home in the state - but that's no help if they can't get mortgages. Six years after the subprime mortgage meltdown, banks remain tight-fisted, even with solid borrowers - a fact they attribute to shifts in government regulation and demands that they buy back bad loans. Mortgage credit has not eased much since 2007, according to Federal Reserve surveys of loan officers, even while low rates and the housing recovery have borrowers lined up seeking financing.

Your odds of winning a Google Glass invite are much higher than finding one of five Golden Tickets to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but there are some strict rules you need to follow. Google this month announced it was letting Americans enter a contest to win the right to buy one of its $1,500 Google Glass devices. Glass is a smartphone-like computer that users wear on their heads much as they would wear normal eyeglasses. The project has been the talk of the tech world since Google revealed it last year.

Good news for local entrepreneurs: Tech Coast Angels' Los Angeles branch has launched a program to fund start-ups in 30 days or less. Michael Green, president of the L.A. branch of Tech Coast Angels , said the Screening2Deal in 30 Days program would speed up the process to get start-ups off the ground. The move is also designed to raise TCA's profile among entrepreneurs, who often seek out funding from more well-known investors or accelerators in the area, he said. "It was taking too long and the reputation unfortunately was these guys are old and slow," Green said of TCA. "We were getting plenty of deal flow -- we get 1,000 [applications a year]

Dear Google Guys: I am writing to you because I would very much like to be a Google “Glass Explorer.” I read about your latest venture, Google Glass, on Wednesday on the Internet and, well, I was so excited that I'm rushing to send in my application. First off, let me just say that I love the Google. My wife and I look up stuff all the time on the Google, and we don't argue nearly as much now about such things as whether driving to Boston from California takes the same amount of time as driving from California to St. Petersburg, Fla.    And the story said applicants must live in the U.S. and be at least 18 to enter: Bingo on both counts!