We've been talking a lot about diversity on the Supreme Court, but we want to look more personally at the issue. Start the conversation by telling us about diversity among your closest peers. How diverse is your inner circle of nine? What makes your circle diverse?

The BBC's Paddy O'Connell reports on the elections in the UK; headlines.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his resignation yesterday, opening the door of 10 Downing Street for Conservative leader David Cameron to step in.

• FINANCIAL TAKEOUT:  The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warned that it will take time to get to the bottom of last week’s precipitous, if brief, market correction that lead the Dow index to drop almost 1000 points in under an hour. The New York Times' Wall Street and finance reporter Louise Story says that hasn’t stopped the country’s top securities regulator from announcing plans to put in place safeguards from preventing a repeat “flash crash.”
• KILLINGS IN CHINA: A string of brutal attacks on schoolchildren in China has the country reeling. This morning, seven kindergarten children and one teacher were killed after a man attacked them with a meat cleaver. The Chinese government has clamped down on reporting on this most recent story in order to avoid copycat attacks. Damian Grammaticas, BBC reporter in Beijing, fills us in.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has carefully guarded her professional and personal lives, especially since being nominated for the Supreme Court earlier this week. To get a fuller picture of the woman who could become one of the nine justices, we talk with two people who knew her as a colleague, a teacher, and a baseball fan, during her time at the University of Chicago Law School from 1991 - 1995.

A plane carrying 104 passengers crashed at the airport in Tripoli, Libya this morning. A young Dutch boy is the only passenger to survive the crash. For more, we hear from BBC reporter, Rana Jawad, who is in Tripoli.

All week, we've been examining President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan. If she is confirmed, there will be three women on the bench, six Catholics, three Jews and no Protestants. We asked you how much diversity her nomination would add to the nation's highest court and hear what you have to say.

Over the past three years, the popularity of unpasteurized milk – or raw milk, as it’s sometimes called – has grown across the country. Advocates say heat-treating milk destroys enzymes and nutrients, while detractors say it's necessary to keep people from getting sick. Battles over how milk is sold and regulated have exploded. 

Ten states, including Maine, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, have made it legal to sell unpasteurized milk in stores. Meanwhile, other states are fighting to make it easier to purchase. In Wisconsin, Governor Jim Doyle indicated last month that he’ll sign a bill – already passed by the senate and assembly - legalizing and regulating the sale of raw milk between farmers and consumers. In Massachusetts, raw milk supporters this week protested the fact that they ONLY have this right. They’d like to be able to buy milk from more places than the state’s 27 regulated farms. And in many states like New Jersey, raw milk supporters secretly run unpasteurized milk across state lines.

If you’re not part of the milk wars, you might be wondering: Why are people fighting so hard to drink milk that’s not pasteurized? And is it safe?

The Takeaway's Washington Correspondent, Todd Zwillich talks about the climate bill hearings; headlines.

(Follow Todd on Twitter @todd_zwillich)

Top executives from BP, Transocean and Halliburton – the three companies involved in the massive oil spill that continues to spew in the Gulf Coast – testified on Capitol Hill yesterday, pointing fingers at each other and deflecting blame from their own firms.

Senators were clearly not amused by all the blame game in full swing. "There's this transference of liability, or finger pointing," Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. "There's going to be plenty of time to figure out who is to blame, who is at fault.”

• SUPREME COURT TAKEOUT: If Elena Kagan needs help preparing for a potentially long and messy confirmation hearing, The New York Times' Adam Liptak says she should read a 1995 article on the topic that she wrote.
• SPORTS TAKEOUT: We're in the midst of NHL and NBA playoffs. And in the boxing world, Manny Pacquiao won his Congressional election in the Philippines. Sports Contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin updates us on these stories.

In the next few months, Arizona will begin to enforce its new immigration law that allows local law enforcement to ask for documentation from people they suspect of being in the country illegally. But its neighbor, New Mexico, vehemently opposes this law and its own House of Representatives has passed a resolution recognizing economic benefits for undocumented immigrants. The rift between the bordering states could make things tricky for law enforcement.

Afghan president, Hamid Karzai meets with President Obama in Washington this week. High up on the agenda will be talking about the Taliban, particularly in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions. However, we look deeper into Pakistan with the BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones. He has just returned from the Punjab, Pakistan’s economic powerhouse, which is a region far away from the border with Afghanistan where the Taliban is gaining in popularity among the poor and disenfranchised.

We are closer than ever to getting our financial life in order here on The Takeaway. This is week nine of our series, Do It Yourself Bailout. Since the beginning of the series Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner, author of "Get a Financial Life" has tackled our trickiest money issues in order to help us all get on sound financial footing. We have talked about how to trick yourself into saving more money and whether you should prioritise your retirement savings over saving for your kid's college, among many other money questions.