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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the U.S. will contribute to a proposed $100 billion fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change-related disasters such as floods and crop failures.

Secret holds are an obscure tradition in which senators anonymously threaten to filibuster executive and judicial nominations. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who is leading the drive to abolish the practice, says she has the support of two-thirds of the Senate to get the Rules Committee to stop them.

When the Supreme Court ruled Monday that most Americans can have a handgun in their homes for self-defense, it opened the door for gun rights groups to take on local and state laws. Some states, like California and New Jersey, have some of the country's toughest laws.

The 60-40 vote to overcome a procedural hurdle and move the bill toward a final vote came moments after Carte Goodwin, a successor to West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, was sworn in. Goodwin was the crucial 60th senator to defeat a Republican filibuster that has led to a lapse in benefits for 2.5 million people.

British Prime Minister David Cameron resisted pressure in Washington this week to investigate possible links between energy giant BP and last year's release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. But just about all parties involved in the affair are pointing fingers at one another.

Lady Gaga's rebellious personality, outrageous fashion sense and outsize way with a chorus have earned her a huge and diverse fan base. Last week, she played three sold-out hometown shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. Critic Will Hermes recently took his niece to one of the concerts.

Critics have said for years that minorities were being unfairly penalized by tough penalties for crack possession.

Recent attacks by militants on security personnel in Baghdad have focused attention on the role of the Sahwa, Sunni groups who were largely credited with helping beat back al-Qaida in Iraq during the most violent years of the war. The Sahwa has been increasingly marginalized by the Iraqi government and is no longer getting paid.

During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people across New York City — many of them tenement-dwellers. In Hot Time in the Old Town, historian Ed Kohn describes the disaster — and how a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat.

The "cloning" scandal has dominated headlines this week amid fears that beef and milk from the offspring of cloned cows have made their way to British supermarkets. British food regulators say there is no danger to the public, but they also concede that they don't exactly know how many cows derived from an American clone are on farms in Britain.