A.M. Splash: Oakland Plans ID's for Undocumented Immigrants; Android Dominates Mobile; Primary Care Doctor Shortage Looms

Starting next year, [Oakland] will begin issuing municipal identification cards to help residents without legal immigration status. Such cards are critical for tasks that range from the urgent, like an interaction with police, to the everyday, like cashing a check. "For a city that is mostly people of color with a large immigrant population, I think it's important that the local government responds to the needs of all the populations in the city," said outgoing Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, who worked on the issue with Mayor Jean Quan. "An ID card is one of those needs."

In the third quarter of 2012, worldwide manufacturers - among them Apple, Samsung, HTC and Research in Motion - shipped 181.1 million smartphones, according to market analytics group IDC. Google's Android operating system was installed on 75 percent of them, says IDC; Apple's system, iOS, was on about 15 percent. That market share for Android was a 91 percent jump from the previous year's third quarter.

Roughly 4 million additional Californians are expected to obtain health insurance by 2014 through the federal health law, an expansion that will likely exacerbate the state's doctor shortage and could even squeeze primary care access in the Bay Area, experts say. Even without the Affordable Care Act, a worsening doctor shortage had been forecast as the state's and nation's population ages and grows, and as a generation of older doctors retires. But by mandating that individuals have insurance and expanding Medicaid, the law will extend coverage to an additional 30 million Americans and place a greater strain on the physician workforce, especially for primary care.

The indiscriminate tastes of preteens notwithstanding, the Oakland students are getting what many parents and school officials across the country consider the top-shelf version of school lunches. Revolution Foods never serves reheated tater tots, greasy pizza or mystery meat. The meals are prepared by chefs using local ingredients, no high-fructose corn syrup, and nothing is ever fried or frozen. They are in the hands of students 24 hours after coming out of the oven. Starting Monday, those fresh meals will be in San Francisco schools.

Work will resume on San Francisco's Central Subway project today on Stockton Street between Ellis and Geary streets, where construction has been on hiatus since Thanksgiving. This portion of Stockton Street near Union Square will be closed to all vehicles except for emergency vehicles, according to the Municipal Transportation Agency.

It's been a year and a half since a chronic scammer named Fofana Mbemba got the city's attention on the issue of parking attendant impersonators - people who pretend to be working at a parking lot that's actually self-service and take unsuspecting drivers' money. And with major events like the America's Cup regatta approaching, it doesn't seem like much has changed. Not only is Mbemba's rap sheet now 13 pages long, including at least seven arrests since his mug shot was splashed on TV in July 2011, but others are in on the game as well.

Several California brown pelicans released at Fort Baker near Sausalito have made their way to Mexico and surprisingly as far north as British Columbia, according to officials at the International Bird Rescue Research Center. In 2009, the organization began putting blue and white bands on pelicans it had rehabilitated. So far, about 1,000 pelicans have been banded statewide, with roughly a third of those being released at Fort Baker.

On the verge of retirement — her replacement will be sworn in Thursday — [Rep. Lynn] Woolsey, 75, offered an assessment of her career as only she could, dismissing her critics as “full of sh--,” and making no apologies for being “a liberal for 20 years in an organization where people would rather you go along to get along.” She is, in many ways, the same outspoken everywoman who shocked the North Coast's political establishment in 1992 by winning what was then the 6th District Congressional seat. She was the longest of long shots, a former welfare mom running against better-known and better-financed opponents. But it was the “Year of the Woman” in California politics, and Woolsey surfed the wave to victory.