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Want to keep your cell phone from ruining a relationship? Remember to:

_ Pay the bill on time, especially if the phone is in the name of your significant other.

_ Erase any text messages, photos and call-log entries that might raise eyebrows.

_ Refrain from using your cell phone to strike your boyfriend upside the head.

By JOHN HILL
State firefighters would be in line for substantial raises under the terms of a last-minute bill approved by the Legislature.

Assembly Bill 2683, passed in the waning hours of the session Thursday, would require the state to link firefighter compensation to the statewide average for jurisdictions with 75 or more firefighters.

Firefighters would join California Highway Patrol officers as state workers with pay tied to counterparts in local agencies.

"They're underpaid and underappreciated," said Aaron Read, whose lobbying firm represents state firefighters.

Others saw it as a last-minute maneuver designed to avoid debate and by-pass collective bargaining.

"Every year, they have some eleventh hour thing that no one has a chance to analyze," said Ron Roach, a spokesman for Cal-Tax, a group that advocates against taxes it considers unnecessary.

By JIM BOREN
There must be a secret manual somewhere that tells desperate politicians they can make points by ignoring their elected jobs, and promising to fix public education. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the latest to drink the school reform Kool-Aid.

It's not that the politicians are wrong about the schools.

By GILBERT CHAN
As Brian Lacey began filling up his sedan, he glanced at the price displayed on the gasoline pump and in mock amazement declared: "I'm thankful for paying under $3 a gallon."

The 29-year-old Sacramento, Calif., social worker then paused.

By DAVID R. BAKER
Take your pick:

Will California's drive to cut greenhouse gases reshape the state's industries, weaning businesses away from fossil fuels and setting the stage for the state's next golden age?

Or will it drive away businesses, ship jobs to Nevada and kill the California economy?

With Gov.

By CAROLYN LOCHHEAD
California's sheer size ensures plenty of fallout from its new initiative on global warming, analysts said, as businesses and politicians alike see an inevitability to the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions.

By GEORGE RAINE
It was Julio Cesar's first day planting trees in the olive orchard in the Sacramento Valley and he already had it down to a science:

Dig a hole half a shovel deep, place the root ball attached to a 12-inch-tall tree in the hole, return the dirt and stomp down on it.

By NANETTE ASIMOV
As part of the federal government's sweeping academic experiment known as No Child Left Behind, every California school this year is supposed to have about a quarter of its students performing at grade level in math and English.

By MARK MARTIN
The agreement between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators to cap greenhouse gas emissions will give a state agency with a history of shaping national environmental policy tremendous new clout over the California economy.

By JANE KAY
California's new effort to curb greenhouse gases will cut less than one-half of 1 percent of the world's emissions, slowing global warming by just a tiny fraction of a degree, scientists say.