Taxi Drivers

San Diego's more than 1,000 taxi and jitney drivers would have to demonstrate their ability to communicate with passengers in English and would be subject to new grooming and dress codes under changes to the city's "paratransit code" that will be considered Monday by the City Council. If the rules are approved, drivers of cabs, jitneys and non-emergency medical vehicles would have to take an oral language exam, administered by San Diego City College, to qualify for a driver identification card.

With a labor dispute threatening to kill the 2011-12 NBA basketball season, restaurant owners, barkeepers and vendors near Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles are bracing for a big loss in revenue from fans who would normally crowd into the area several times a week. The deadlocked contract talks have hit particularly hard on a new Hooters restaurant that opened in July on Figueroa Street across from Staples Center to draw big-spending Lakers and Clippers fans. "We definitely opened this restaurant to be event-driven," said Hooters general manager Laura Acton, who complained that she doesn't have enough work for all of the waitresses she hired to serve NBA fans.

A Bangladeshi immigrant paid a record $360,000 at a city auction for a New York taxi medallion, which is required by the city to own a taxicab. Most cabdrivers in the city work for taxi fleets or lease time from a medallion owner. Mohammed Shah, 44, mortgaged his house in the New York borough of Queens to help finance the purchase Monday of one of 116 new taxi medallions sold to the highest bidders. The price of an owner-driver medallion rose almost $50,000 from last year.

Woe is the taxi driver in China. The roads are clogged with about 40,000 new cars a day, the price of gasoline has doubled in the last five years, and passenger fares have barely budged even though everything else in the country is getting more expensive. Fed up with their shrinking profit margins, 1,500 cabbies in the eastern city of Hangzhou went on strike this month demanding higher fares. "Ten years ago, taxi drivers belonged to the high-income group. Now we have become part of the low-income group," a Hangzhou cab driver told the Oriental Daily, explaining how his pay after expenses had dropped from about $730 a month six years ago to $470 today.

The prayer in Spanish sounded like one from an ordinary Catholic Mass. But the man who led it wore a coyote-skin headdress and called himself the last of 13 generations of brujos -- witch doctors -- in his family. FOR THE RECORD: Santa Muerte: An article in Monday's Section A about followers of the sect of Santa Muerte misspelled the last name of Rick Nahmias, a photographer who has documented the movement, as Nahmais. — The name the worshipers invoked was not that of the Virgin Mary but of Santa Muerte, or "Holy Death," a Mexican folk saint linked to narcotics trafficking, a kind of female grim reaper with a skull for a face.

Esam Yousif hovered by his freshly painted taxi, holding the decals that would christen it taxi No. 654. Once the stickers were affixed and his radio and meter installed, he would be ready to hit the road. For Yousif, 39, and more than 200 other veteran cab drivers, this month marked a new start in their careers -- as members of a taxi cooperative launched after a four-year fight to increase competition in Colorado's tightly controlled taxi market.

About 13,000 Seoul taxi drivers went on strike Friday after last-ditch talks with vehicle owners' representatives failed. The strike, over demands for better pay and working conditions, halted about 30% of the capital's 41,000 taxis, Labor Ministry officials said.

Another taxicab driver has been murdered ("Leads Sought in Slaying of Cabdriver," June 15). Los Angeles taxicab passengers, please do not take offense at your driver's safety precautions; his is a dangerous job. (I am a driver for Bell Cab.) Abraham Sutherland Los Angeles

Woe is the taxi driver in China. The roads are clogged with about 40,000 new cars a day, the price of gasoline has doubled in the last five years, and passenger fares have barely budged even though everything else in the country is getting more expensive. Fed up with their shrinking profit margins, 1,500 cabbies in the eastern city of Hangzhou went on strike this month demanding higher fares. "Ten years ago, taxi drivers belonged to the high-income group. Now we have become part of the low-income group," a Hangzhou cab driver told the Oriental Daily, explaining how his pay after expenses had dropped from about $730 a month six years ago to $470 today.

Fourteen taxi drivers are fighting to share in a $90-million lottery ticket, contending they were part of a pool that bought the ticket. The cabbies' attorney concedes they didn't contribute to the pool for last week's drawing, but they have regularly paid into the kitty since the lottery pool was formed last month.

Santa Monica officials are investigating claims that doormen at some of the city's finest hotels are seeking bribes from taxicab drivers in exchange for fares, a long-standing practice that the beachside town's new taxi franchise system aims to stop. Before the new rules went into effect March 1, it was common for hotels to have contracts with taxi companies or for taxi drivers to give doormen tips to win business, said Don Patterson, Santa Monica's business and revenue operations manager.

Hiroshi Miura and a dozen other taxi drivers dressed in crisp blue shirts were shooting the breeze in front of the quiet Tokyo Bay Hotel at dusk Saturday. They had one thing on their minds: "X Day. " "That's the day Disney is going to reopen," said Miura, leaning against a buddy's black cab and lamenting how he has lost at least two-thirds of his fares since Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Sea shut down after Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami. "They're going to post a notice five days before 'X Day' on their website announcing what day they are starting operations.

The rising Southern California-bred soprano Angel Blue is having a smashing Vienna debut ? except for an ugly encounter with a racist cab driver outside a Starbucks in the Austrian capital. Blue, who has sung several roles for Los Angeles Opera, where she trained in its Domingo-Thornton Young Artist program, was on break from rehearsals for Benjamin Britten's "The Rape of Lucretia" and needed a ride back to the venerable Theater an der Wien opera house. She hopped in a white Mercedes cab, according to the Viennese weekly magazine News, only to hear the driver snarl, "I don't drive black women.

Still searching for that perfect gift for your brother-in-law or a persnickety client? Coffee-table books might fit the bill, what with that suitable heft and an undeniable quotient of cool. Here we offer a few last-minute selections for those gaps on your list: Beginnings Anne Geddes Anne Geddes Publishing, $50 The Aussie photographer was contemplating a hiatus from her studio when she came across an exhibit of birds' nests. This unexpected encounter turned into the inspiration for her latest collection of baby photos, "Beginnings.

A taxi driver fatally shot at least 12 people and injured 25 while driving from one village to another in Britain's coastal West Cumbria region, before apparently shooting himself, police said. Authorities said the body of 52-year-old suspect Derrick Bird was found in a wooded area a few miles inland several hours after the shooting began in Whitehaven, but they did not describe any injuries. A shotgun was next to the body. Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said late Wednesday that authorities were trying to determine whether the shootings were "a premeditated or a random attack."

In the code of the taxi motorcyclists of northern Nigeria, only weaklings and losers refuse a heavy load. But it takes a real man to handle the unbearable lightness of eggs. Baba Isa can carry a tower of egg cartons, 100 eggs per layer, stacked right up to his chin. Behind, his passenger carries two similar fragile towers, one on each leg. It's a feat worthy of Nureyev, weaving lightly through the potholes, delicately nudging through a tangle of honking cars, not to mention the other motorcyclists with equally unwieldy loads.

A taxi driver in the San Gabriel Valley community of East Valinda was found shot dead in his cab Monday afternoon, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies said. Deputies responded to a call of shots fired in the 17600 block of Gemini Street just north of the city of Industry about 3:30 p.m. When they arrived, they found the victim slumped over the steering wheel of his cab, the engine running, said Deputy Cruz Solis.

A taxi cab driver was shot in the back of the head by a robber early Monday, authorities said. The driver, whose name was not released, was in critical condition at UCLA Medical Center, authorities said. The assailant took an unknown amount of money, authorities said. California Highway Patrol responded to a report that a taxi had crashed into a pole near Slauson and Corning avenues about 12:30 a.m., Sgt. Michael Holland said.

A Chicago taxi driver was arrested Friday on charges that he provided material support to Al Qaeda by trying to send money overseas, federal authorities said. Raja Lahrasib Khan, 56, was arrested in downtown Chicago while working, authorities said. Khan was charged with two counts of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and could face up to 15 years on each count. Federal prosecutors said there did not appear to be any imminent threat, though Khan had spoken with an associate about wanting to bomb a stadium.

The prayer in Spanish sounded like one from an ordinary Catholic Mass. But the man who led it wore a coyote-skin headdress and called himself the last of 13 generations of brujos -- witch doctors -- in his family. FOR THE RECORD: Santa Muerte: An article in Monday's Section A about followers of the sect of Santa Muerte misspelled the last name of Rick Nahmias, a photographer who has documented the movement, as Nahmais. — The name the worshipers invoked was not that of the Virgin Mary but of Santa Muerte, or "Holy Death," a Mexican folk saint linked to narcotics trafficking, a kind of female grim reaper with a skull for a face.