Licenses

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

California's agency that licenses lawyers wants to admit an illegal immigrant to practice law, an unprecedented request that the state's highest court decided Wednesday to review. The State Bar of California certified Sergio C. Garcia after he passed a written test and a moral examination, sending it to the California Supreme Court for routine approval. The bar informed the court at the time that Garcia was undocumented. In a unanimous decision, the state high court ordered the bar to explain why an illegal immigrant should be given a legal license and invited briefs from other parties, opening the door to a potentially heated debate over national immigration policy.

Bob Brickman spent months fighting a ticket he got last fall from a red-light traffic camera at Wilshire and Sepulveda boulevards in West Los Angeles. The 61-year-old from Playa Vista eventually decided to give up the fight and fork over the $476 fine. Now he's regretting paying every penny. City officials this week spotlighted a surprising revelation involving red-light camera tickets: Authorities cannot force violators who simply don't respond to pay them. For a variety of reasons, including the way the law was written, Los Angeles officials say the fines for ticketed motorists are essentially "voluntary" and there are virtually no tangible consequences for those who refuse to pay. The disclosure comes as the city is considering whether to drop the controversial photo enforcement program, with the City Council scheduled to vote on the matter Wednesday.

NEW DELHI - Hundreds of Air India pilots did not report to work Thursday, the fourth day of a sickout to protest their treatment by management, a dispute that so far has resulted in the cancellation of numerous international flights and cost about 45 pilots their jobs. Officials said the Mumbai-based airline was forced to cancel more than 35 international flights this week, including several bound for New York and Frankfurt, because of the protest. India's aviation minister called the sickout illegal, the airline said it had fired some pilots, and a high court called for negotiations.

The California medical license of Jack Kevorkian, who acquired an international reputation and the moniker "Dr. Death" for assisting in 20 suicides, including that of a Costa Mesa man, will be permanently revoked as of midnight Friday, the state attorney general's office said Wednesday. The Medical Board of California, which suspended Kevorkian's license in April, 1993, issued its decision June 29, effective a month later. Details of the ruling were not made public until Wednesday.

California's agency that licenses lawyers wants to admit an illegal immigrant to practice law, an unprecedented request that the state's highest court decided Wednesday to review. The State Bar of California certified Sergio C. Garcia after he passed a written test and a moral examination, sending it to the California Supreme Court for routine approval. The bar informed the court at the time that Garcia was undocumented. In a unanimous decision, the state high court ordered the bar to explain why an illegal immigrant should be given a legal license and invited briefs from other parties, opening the door to a potentially heated debate over national immigration policy.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck wants to revamp the department's rules to allow his officers greater discretion in deciding when to seize and impound the car of an unlicensed driver with no prior convictions, and in determining how long it should be held. The policy change is long overdue. No doubt the proposal will stir anger in nativist circles, where it will be portrayed as a sop to undocumented immigrants, who are barred from obtaining driver's licenses and whose lives would be made a little less difficult as a result of this change.

A staff member working as a doctor at a Gardena medical clinic was arrested and booked Thursday for practicing medicine and issuing prescription drugs without a state license--a misdemeanor charge. Aquilino M. Dizon, a 14-month employee of Tri-City Industrial Medical Group Inc., was arrested after a nearly two-month investigation by the state Department of Consumer Affair's Board of Medical Quality Assurance, investigators said.

While the world frets over the WikiLeaks revelations, India is far more interested in Raja, Radia and Dutt. They are major players in a series of homegrown leaks that hint at widespread and corrosive corruption involving government, big business and the news media. Former Telecommunications Minister Andimuthu Raja, corporate publicist Nira Radia and TV news personality Barkha Dutt are named in 104 telephone calls caught on tape, part of what's been called India's biggest scandal since independence.

Reporting from Sacramento -- A Los Angeles lawmaker has launched another bid to obtain drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who has made several past attempts and is serving his final year in the Legislature, said Friday that he was encouraged by comments from Police Chief Charlie Beck and Sheriff Lee Baca in favor of licensing the undocumented. "As we are now hearing from the police chief and the sheriff, public safety has to be primary, and we have to take politics out of public safety," Cedillo said.

Imagine flying into Las Vegas and renting a self-driving car that zips you around the Strip and anywhere else you want to go? That fantasy may not be so far off. Nevada just issued the first autonomous vehicle testing license in the U.S. to Google. The state's  Department of Motor Vehicles announced Monday that the adapted Prius developed by Google in 2010 was tested on freeways, in neighborhoods around Carson City and even on the Las Vegas Strip before the license was granted.

WASHINGTON - Concerned about possible cyber spying, U.S. national security officials are debating whether to take the unprecedented step of recommending that a Chinese government-owned mobile phone giant be denied a license to offer international service to American customers. China Mobile, the world's largest mobile provider, applied in October for a license from the Federal Communications Commission to provide service between China and the United States and to build facilities on American soil.

It had only been a few years since Adam Yauch had found fame as the in-your-face rapper and bass player MCA in the transgressive, boundary-breaking trio the Beastie Boys. But in 1992 he was searching for something else, traveling in Nepal to snowboard and pursue a growing interest in Buddhism when he came upon a group of Tibetan refugees. The encounter intensified his interest in the teachings of the Dalai Lama, and he was soon one of the world's leading advocates for the cause of Tibetan independence.

WASHINGTON — Police departments across the country have bought inexpensive small drone aircraft with cameras to help track drug dealers, find missing children and locate wandering Alzheimer's patients, but federal rules designed to protect the nation's airspace have kept them grounded. That is about to change in a dramatic way. Under a law President Obama signed in February, the Federal Aviation Administration must write rules by May 14 on how it will license police, fire department and other public safety agencies eager to fly lightweight drones at low altitudes.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League filed suit Wednesday against the city and its Police Department over a controversial policy that will limit cases in which police officers impound vehicles of drivers operating without a license. The new procedures put Los Angeles police officers in conflict with state laws governing 30-day impounds and could expose them to civil liability, according to the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The union, which represents more than 9,900 sworn LAPD employees, is asking a judge to determine the validity of the policy and impose an injunction to stop it from being implemented.

A doctor who co-wrote a popular 1960s song performed by the Beach Boys has surrendered his medical license after medical authorities accused him of prescribing medications for himself. Dr. Donald Jay Altfeld called in prescriptions for himself for drugs including Xanax and Norco, the Medical Board of California alleged in a 17-page decision made public Monday. Altfeld co-wrote the song "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena," which was performed by the Beach Boys and included in their No. 1 album "Beach Boys Concert" from 1964.

The Federal Aviation Administration revoked the licenses Tuesday of the two Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot a Minneapolis airport by 150 miles, saying that they "were on a frolic" that endangered the lives of others. The revocation report, released Tuesday, harshly condemned the two pilots and barred them from flying. "You engaged in conduct that put your passengers and your crew in serious jeopardy," FAA officials wrote in the report. The pilots -- Capt. Timothy B. Cheney, 53, of Gig Harbor, Wash.

A Northridge doctor's license was suspended Thursday after medical authorities found that he had been injecting his daughter at home with propofol, the same drug that killed pop star Michael Jackson. Robert S. Markman, a retired anesthesiologist, constructed a treatment area in his adult daughter's "filthy" house, in a bedroom she rarely left, the Medical Board of California alleged in a ruling on an interim suspension order made public Thursday. Markman, according to the board's order, injected his daughter, referred to only as L.M., with the surgical anesthetic about 500 times over five years.

Danielle Pepers is such a fan of"The Hunger Games"that she had the book's unofficial mascot - a mockingjay - tattooed on her right arm this month. But her intrigue with the books and movie, which hit theaters Friday, didn't stop there. On a recent Wednesday, Pepers, 27, was shopping for T-shirts and jewelry at Hot Topic, a teen-oriented chain store at the Glendale Galleria that sells pop-culture ephemera. A mound of movie tie-in merchandise greeted her at the door. There were knee socks, pillowcases and nail polish.