Tenacity marked U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg's journey from poor child to multimillionaire who served for decades in the Senate, leaving his mark along the way on aspects of American life including public transportation and the environment, relatives and dignitaries said Wednesday at his funeral at a New York City synagogue.

"He never quit anything. He never gave up. He never gave in," Vice President Joe Biden told the 1,100 mourners, including former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and several former governors and many of Lautenberg's Senate colleagues.

Lautenberg, a liberal Democrat from New Jersey who served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, died Monday after complications from viral pneumonia. At 89, he was the oldest member of the Senate and the last of 115 World War II veterans to serve there.

In a service that spanned 2½ hours, admirers including Clinton and several of Lautenberg's children and grandchildren remembered the causes he championed and his drive to fight for what he believed, whether on the Senate floor or around the dinner table .

His casket was to lie in repose in the Senate on Thursday, on the Lincoln Catafalque, a bier that was built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln. He will be buried Friday at Arlington National Cemetery.

American wins British literary prize

American novelist A.M. Homes has won this year's Women's Prize for Fiction with her sixth novel "May We Be Forgiven." Homes beat-award winning writer Hilary Mantel and three other finalists for the $45,000 prize — previously known as the Orange Prize, one of Britain's most prestigious literary awards. On Wednesday, actress Miranda Richardson, who chaired a panel of judges, praised Homes' novel, a story about two brothers, as a "dazzling, original, viscerally funny black comedy" and a "subversion of the American dream."

Fry

Actor reveals suicide attempt: British actor and writer Stephen Fry says he attempted suicide last year while filming abroad. In an interview recorded with comic Richard Herring, Fry said he took "a huge number of pills" with vodka and was found unconscious by his producer in his hotel room. He also said during the podcast interview, parts of which were available on the BBC website Wednesday, that as president of a mental health charity he wants to be open about his situation. Fry has bipolar disorder.

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