Hearing

WATERTOWN, Mass. -- An hour or two before, Deanna Finn hadn't anticipated she'd be ducking with her son in the bathroom of her Watertown home, listening to gunshots, her husband blocks away. The travel ban that had marooned area residents in their homes had just been lifted when Sean Finn decided to go out for milk and cigarettes. It had been a strange day, cooped up in their apartment at the corner of Franklin and Walnut streets in Watertown. Police had searched the yard earlier in the day, and friends' houses had taken bullet holes in another part of Watertown.

The federal government has the authority to detain and deport immigrants who violate the law. But it also has the responsibility to ensure that those it holds while they fight their deportation cases aren't locked up for months, or years, without an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge who can determine whether their prolonged detention is warranted. This week the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the Obama administration's obligation to provide such hearings to immigrants detained for more than six months, at least in Southern California.

Our long national nightmare appears to be over: Kim Kardashian reached a divorce agreement with Kris Humphries on Friday in L.A. A judge signed off on the deal, reportedly telling the reality-TV star, "Congratulations on your dissolution. "  The divorce will become final once papers are prepped and signed by both parties. PHOTOS: Kim Kardashian's relationships and flings And what did Humphries get out of the deal by being a pill since Halloween 2011 and insisting on an annulment instead of a divorce?

A tree grows most surely in Brooklyn. But what's in a ZIP Code? The Los Angeles Philharmonic began its Brooklyn Festival on Tuesday night with a Green Umbrella concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The hip New York City borough is not just a destination for visual artists, artisan picklers and other assorted foodies, but also host to a significant new music scene. Meanwhile, Hear Now held its third annual Festival of Contemporary Los Angeles Music in Venice - where foodies (along with artisan picklers)

WASHINGTON - President Obama's pick for Labor secretary, Thomas E. Perez, emerged unscathed Thursday from a Senate confirmation hearing that was more perfunctory than contentious. Conservatives have been critical of Perez, the administration's top civil rights enforcer, portraying him as a dangerous liberal who would be an overly assertive regulator at the Labor Department. But despite predictions that his confirmation could be acrimonious, there was very little of the tough questioning that Republican adversaries said he deserved.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court Wednesday grappled with whether a California ban on therapy to change a minor's sexual orientation amounted to a restriction on free speech or mere regulation of a medical treatment. During a hearing in San Francisco, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals considered two lower-court rulings that reached opposite conclusions about the constitutionality of the new state law, which would penalize licensed health professionals who try to change a minor's sexual orientation.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court took up a deceptively simple question in a case brought by breast cancer patients and medical researchers: Are human genes patentable? The answer appeared to be "no" during Monday's oral arguments. The justices signaled that they probably will bar any grants of exclusive and profitable patents on human genes that prevent other scientists from testing these pieces of DNA. But the justices were aware the issue itself was anything but simple, and they sounded wary of going too far and taking away the financial incentives for companies and their scientists to explore new uses for DNA. "The patent law is filled with uneasy compromises," Justice Stephen G. Breyer said.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court was asked Tuesday to decide who should raise a 3 1/2-year-old girl who was given up by her single mother: the South Carolina couple who adopted her at birth or her biological father, who invoked his rights as a Cherokee Indian to claim his child. The justices spent part of the morning as family court judges, and they did not envy those who must decide such emotionally trying disputes every day. "Domestic relations pose the hardest problems for judges," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a 2nd Amendment challenge to a New York law that strictly limits who can carry a gun in public, leaving states and cities, at least for now, with broad authority to regulate guns outside of homes. Without comment, the justices let stand an appeals court ruling that interpreted the 2nd Amendment as protecting only the right to have a weapon at home. The high court's action leaves in doubt the extent of the individual “right to bear arms” protected by the 2nd Amendment.

Can a private company own rights to your DNA? The nine justices of the Supreme Court will consider that question Monday as lawyers for Myriad Genetics make their best case that the company should be able to keep its patent on two genes known to influence the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Challenging that notion will be lawyers representing the Assn. for Molecular Pathology and other scientific organizations, which argue that allowing genes to be patented slows or shuts down scientific research involving those genes.