Foreign Labor

Two local immigration attorneys have been charged with fraud after allegedly filing false employment visa applications for 14 foreign nationals working for their firm, according to a federal grand jury indictment released Thursday. The lawyers, of ASK Law Group in Sherman Oaks, filed the fraudulent applications and paid their employees in cash while awaiting approval for the visas, according to the indictment.

High-tech firms and other businesses are urging Congress to increase the number of visas available for skilled foreign workers after immigration officials announced this week that the 65,000 visa cap was reached within hours. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received more than 150,000 H-1B petitions Monday, the first day companies could submit applications for potential workers. Applications received Tuesday have not been tallied.

When is local journalism not really local? When it's about Pasadena and written by someone in India. James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website, hired two reporters last weekend to cover the Pasadena City Council. One lives in Mumbai and will be paid $12,000 a year. The other will work in Bangalore for $7,200. The council broadcasts its meetings on the Web.

A local news website's editor who hired two reporters in India to cover Pasadena said he had been so overwhelmed by reaction to his plan that he had to postpone publication of their first stories. James Macpherson said he had not found the time he hoped to train one of his new staffers to cover Monday's City Council meeting, shown on the Web.

Gunmen seized a boatload of foreign oil workers Friday, and embassies said three Americans, four Britons and a South African were among them. The vessel, owned by a Nigerian oil-services company, was carrying the foreigners in the Niger Delta, a vast lawless region of mangrove swamps and creeks in southern Nigeria, security officials said. Nearly 200 foreign workers have been kidnapped in 18 months of attacks on oil companies and security forces in the oilfields of the Niger Delta.

Nicole Oswell was a straight-A student passionately interested since first grade in following in her mother's footsteps as a registered nurse. But she had to wait two years to get into Los Angeles Trade Tech's nursing program, she said, her frustration mounting as national nursing shortages worsened. Lizbeth Gutierrez got lucky. Her wait was only six months.

Kohl's Corp. removed some styles of its Daisy Fuentes clothing line after learning of allegations that the Guatemalan factory where the clothes are made is a sweatshop, where workers are humiliated and forced to work unpaid overtime. The National Labor Committee, a New York-based workers rights group, issued a report after learning of complaints by employees at the Fribo factory in rural Santa Maria Cauque de Sacatepequez. Kohl's, based in Menomonee Falls, Wis.

While Gap Inc.'s stores have been disappointing shoppers and investors, the factories making the retailer's clothes have been treating workers better, according to the company's latest assessment of its labor practices. The update released Thursday marked the third time the owner of the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains had publicly critiqued the conditions in overseas factories often derided as "sweatshops" because of abuses inflicted on employees.

The U.S. Embassy on Tuesday banned diplomats and other civilian government employees indefinitely from traveling by land outside the heavily protected Green Zone as American and Iraqi officials debated the legal status of foreign security contractors after a weekend shooting incident here in which eight civilians were reported killed.

Edwin Maher was having a "Broadcast News" moment, feeling a flicker of self-doubt, an attack of the sweats waiting to happen beneath the white-hot studio lights. The veteran Australian TV reporter and weatherman was starting a new job abroad as a prime-time news anchor. But decades of on-camera presence couldn't prepare him for this gig, mouthing the party line for an imposing state-run TV network with armed soldiers posted at the entrance gates. He was reading the news in communist China.