Democrats questioned why the state planned to spend millions of dollars on mechanisms that have yet be evaluated or clearly defined.

“A lot of the language we’re using here is very fuzzy,” said Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, chair of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. “I think we really need to develop something that all of the public understands.”

The committee held the Legislature’s first public hearing on how to implement the greenhouse gas reductions called for in the law, which was signed with great fanfare last year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It imposes the country’s first statewide cap on emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are blamed for global warming. The law requires California to reduce emissions by an estimated 25 percent by 2020 – an estimated 174 million metric tons.

The California Air Resources Board, which was charged with implementing the law, has begun hearings and workshops to sort out how much the state must reduce its emissions and what industries will be asked to do.

The board is considering a variety of strategies, including creating new regulations for fuels and creating a market that would allow companies to buy and sell credits to meet their obligations under the law, commonly referred to as Assembly Bill 32.

“This is a critical moment,” said Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City. “Implementing AB32 is probably a task equally important as passing AB32. We have to set the right tone for the coming years.”

The law is one of the key ways California lawmakers are seeking to limit global climate change.

Scientists and experts in various state agencies predict climate change could diminish California’s water supply, stress farm land and forests, and alter the coast line as sea levels rise.

Acer Inc. said Wednesday it is conducting a full investigation into patent infringement allegations made by Hewlett-Packard Co.

Palo Alto-based HP (NYSE:HPQ) on Tuesday filed suit against Taipei-based Acer and its San Jose-based U.S. subsidiary, claiming infringement of five of HP's patents in the United States.

The suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, Texas, claims Acer violated patents related to optical drive editing, clock frequency switching, utilization-based power management of a clocked device, attaching devices to a digital serial bus, and multiple-chip processing. The HP patents were issued between 1997 and 2003.

HP is asking for unspecified damages, an injunction, and legal costs.

In response, Acer said it "respects the intellectual properties of third parties and is currently conducting a full investigation of these allegations made by Hewlett-Packard. As part of our continuing service, Acer is dedicated to supporting our customers through the lawsuit."

Monica Goodling's announcement that she would take the Fifth Amendment to avoid possibly incriminating herself came as the embattled attorney general cast himself as misunderstood in his conflicting accounts of his involvement in the firings. Goodling is the Justice Department's liaison to the White House.

Gonzales was to be in Cincinnati and Chicago on Tuesday in the latest leg of a multistate tour to promote a crackdown on child sex abuse and soothe U.S. attorneys who might be smarting over the dismissals.

Fending off calls for his resignation, Gonzales on Monday said he was "really pained" by Republicans and Democrats who say he has lost his credibility in dealing with the firings. A growing number of critics say the dismissals were politically motivated.

He sought to stem the furor over his March 13 statement that he "never saw documents" and "never had a discussion" about the firings. His schedule for last Nov. 27 showed he participated in an hourlong meeting and approved a detailed plan on the dismissals. He maintained he was not closely involved in the firings, and did not help select which prosecutors would be told to resign.

"The criminal actions of this corporation had threatened to turn on the lights on the modern battlefield for our enemies and expose American soldiers to great harm," Brownlee said.

ITT defense-related technical data was given to China, Singapore and the United Kingdom in order to cut costs, government investigators said.

"Placing profits ahead of the security of our nation is simply not acceptable for any corporation," Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Julie Myers said in a statement.

ITT, which Brownlee said is the U.S. military's 12th largest systems supplier, is the first major defense contractor convicted of a criminal violation under the Arms Export Control Act that a Brownlee spokesman said was passed in 1976.

According to the prosecutor, ITT agreed to pay a $2 million criminal fine, forfeit $28 million in illegal proceeds to the U.S. government and pay $20 million to the State Department.

"ITT will pay $50 million in restitution to the victims of their crimes _ the American soldier," Brownlee said.

The fine will be suspended for five years and the White Plains, N.Y.-based company can reduce it dollar-for-dollar by investing in the development and production of more advanced night-vision technology so the U.S. military maintains battlefield advantage.

The government will maintain the rights to any technologies ITT develops and can share them with rival defense firms bidding on future contracts, Brownlee said.

A group of public employee unions today filed lawsuits in opposition to the recommendations of the State's Berger Commission, which last year offered that multiple hospitals across New York need to be closed in order to control rising costs. The lawsuits, which focus on several hospitals upstate, argue that the State should not have empowered an unelected panel to make these decisions, among other things.

"The Berger Commission recommendation is a violation of the New York State Constitution. Decisions to close or merge hospitals should not be made by a commission that is unaccountable to the public and appointed by an outgoing governor. The commission also violated the Education Law. Only SUNY trustees have the authority to operate Upstate Medical Center. That authority cannot be transferred to any other entity,” said New York State Public Employees Federation President Ken Brynien.

John Williams, from the Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues attempted to forecast the risk of novel or disappearing climates by the year 2100, using global climate models and greenhouse gas emission scenarios from the recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC).

Their findings are being published Tuesday in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers found that under both high and low emissions scenarios, many regions would experience biome-scale changes. Biomes are types of major ecological communities, such as rainforest, grassland, or desert.

Tropical and subtropical regions may experience previously unrecorded climates, with the greatest changes in Amazonian and Indonesian rainforests. Areas like the southeastern United States and the Arabian Peninsula may also be affected.

Tropical mountains and poleward regions, such as the Peruvian and Colombian Andes, Siberia, and southern Australia, face a risk of climates disappearing altogether.

In the high-end scenario, up to 39 percent and 48 percent of the planet's land surface could experience novel or disappearing climates, respectively, while in the low-end scenario, the projections are up to 20 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

The regions facing climate disappearance have also been recently identified as biodiversity hotspots, suggesting that standard conservation solutions may fail to protect the fragile biodiversity in these areas.