Senators trying to craft bipartisan climate legislation offered a revised proposal Thursday that would add incentives for building nuclear power plants and open the way for expanded oil and gas drilling off the nation's coastlines in hopes of attracting wider support.

The new framework for a Senate climate bill would ease back requirements for early reductions of greenhouse gases. It calls for cuts in the range of 17 percent by 2020, instead of 20 percent, similar to reductions already approved by the House and what Obama will call for at an international climate conference in Copenhagen.

"We would like to underscore the fact that the framework we are releasing today is a starting point for our negotiations going forward," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The framework provided only a broad view of what a compromise bill would include with details to emerge early next year. But it reflects a widespread view that the climate bill that advanced out of committee in early November would need to be significantly revised for any hope of getting bipartisan support from at least 60 senators.

The pouty-lipped Bratz dolls can strut their stuff a little longer.

A federal appeals court panel in Pasadena on Wednesday suspended an order that MGA Entertainment stop selling Bratz products this year, recall remaining toys and give ownership of the brand to rival Mattel Inc.

Mattel won $100 million last year in a lawsuit that claimed copyright infringement and breach of contract because the dolls' designer was under contract to Mattel when he developed the Bratz concept.

MGA was ordered to transition its Bratz line to Mattel by 2010, but the U.S. 9th Circuit appellate panel stayed the order until it can rule on MGA's appeal.

MGA Chief Executive Isaac Larian says the order is a victory for fair competition.

Mattel says it can't comment until the appeals process is over.

Unions leaders, among the most passionate backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, pressed Democratic senators Thursday to drop a tax on high-value insurance plans to pay for remaking the nation's system.

As the Senate entered its 11th straight day of debate on the sweeping legislation, members of several labor unions denounced the proposed tax on so-called "Cadillac plans," arguing it wouldn't just hit CEOs but also middle-class Americans who passed on salary increases to negotiate better health benefits.

"I support health care reform but I can't afford this tax," Valerie Castle Stanley, an AT&T call center worker and member of the Communications Workers of America, said at a news conference outside the Capitol. "For families like mine that are on a budget, the results will be devastating."

At issue is a proposed 40 percent excise tax on insurance companies, keyed to premiums paid on health care plans costing more than $8,500 annually for individuals and $23,000 for families. The tax would raise some $150 billion over 10 years to help pay for the Democrats' nearly $1 trillion health care bill. The legislation, which appears to be edging closer to passage, would revamp the U.S. health care system with new requirements on individuals and employers designed to extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans.

The Supreme Court appeared inclined Tuesday to limit federal prosecutors' use of a fraud law that has helped win convictions of high-profile corporate executives and public officials, or throw out the law altogether.

The justices, hearing two challenges to the honest services fraud law, seemed to be in broad agreement that the law is vague and has been used to make a crime out of mistakes, minor transgressions and mere ethical violations.

Justice Stephen Breyer said he worries that the Obama administration's reading of the law makes criminals out of vast numbers of U.S. workers, including possibly employees who read The Daily Racing Form on the job.

"There are 150 million workers in the United States. I think 140 of them would flunk the test," Breyer said.

The vagueness of the honest services statute "is the working problem here," Justice Anthony Kennedy said.

Justice Antonin Scalia called the law "a mush of language" and pointed out that federal prosecutors have used it different ways in different prosecutions. If the Justice Department can't figure out what is embraced by this law, "I don't know how you expect the average citizen to," Scalia said.

A New York psychiatrist is expected in federal court to discuss the religious writings of the man accused of abducting Elizabeth Smart.

According to Dr. Michael Welner, some of Brian David Mitchell's writings claim that Smart went with him willingly and with the permission of her parents.

Mitchell drafted the "Book of Immanuel David Isaiah II" after his arrest and interrogations by police in March 2003.

Welner is testifying as part of a 10-day competency hearing to determine whether Mitchell can stand trial in U.S. District Court. The competency hearing enters its second week Monday.

Mitchell is charged with kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines.

Prosecutors contend Mitchell is competent and faking an illness to avoid prosecution.

Condemned killer Kenneth Biros could become the first person in the country put to death with a single dose of an intravenous anesthetic instead of the usual — and faster-acting — three-drug process if his execution proceeds Tuesday.

The execution could propel other states to eventually consider the switch, which proponents say ends arguments over unnecessary suffering during injection. California and Tennessee previously considered then rejected the one-drug approach.

Though the untested method has never been used on an inmate in the United States, one difference is clear: Biros will likely die more slowly than inmates put to death with the three-drug method, which includes a drug that stops the heart.

Lethal injection experts on both sides of the debate over injection say thiopental sodium, which kills by putting people so deeply asleep they stop breathing, will take longer.

How much longer is unclear: Mark Dershwitz, an anesthesiologist who advised Ohio on its switch to the single drug, has written death should occur in under 15 minutes.

Ohio inmates have typically taken about seven minutes to die after the three-drug IV injection, which combines thiopental sodium with the drugs pancuronium bromide — which paralyzes muscles — and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest. Dershwitz also said in a court filing last week that a single dose of thiopental sodium would take longer than the three drugs, though he didn't specify a time.

A condemned Ohio man asked a federal judge Thursday for an emergency order to stop next week's planned execution, arguing the state is rushing too fast to use its new, one-drug lethal injection process.

Kenneth Biros said the untested method announced last month could jeopardize his right to an execution that does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Biros, 51, says moving ahead with the process would amount to human experimentation with a system never used before in the United States "or any other civilized country."

Biros is concerned the method "will not result in the dignified, humane, quick, and painless death that is required by the federal and state constitutions," his attorneys said in Thursday's court filing.

Biros has also challenged the one-drug method in federal court and also asked a federal appeals court in Cincinnati to delay Tuesday's execution.

Biros killed 22-year-old Tami Engstrom near Warren in 1991 after he offered to drive her home from a bar, then scattered her body parts in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The state opposes any delay, and Gov. Ted Strickland on Thursday denied Biros' request for clemency.