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scheduled to remain in Hawaii until Jan. 6.
• In the past, the president's end-of-the-year holiday in his native state had stretched into the new year. The first family left Washington last Friday night.
• Congress was expected to return to Washington on Thursday. Before he departed for Hawaii, Obama told reporters he expected to be back in the capital this week.
• Without action by Obama and Congress, automatic budget cuts and tax increases are set to begin in January, which many economists say could send the country back into recession. So far, the president and congressional Republicans have been unable to reach agreement on any alternatives.
• ___

• NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) -- This Christmas was unlike any other in Newtown.
• When a gunman wiped out nearly an entire first-grade class and killed students and adults in two other first-grade classrooms just 11 days before Christmas, it made it impossible for the holiday to be the same this year.
• Some residents, like Joanne Brunetti, have found ways to console and help their grieving neighbors. Well-wishers from around the country are stopping by to do the same.
• Brunetti watched over 26 candles that had been lit at midnight, just before Christmas Day, in honor of those slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She and her husband, Bill, signed up for a three-hour shift and erected a tent to ensure that the candle flames never went out throughout the day.
• "You have to do something and you don't know what to do, you know? You really feel very helpless in this situation," she said Tuesday. "People have been wonderful to everybody in Newtown whether you were part of what happened or not. My thought is if we were all this nice to each other all the time maybe things like this wouldn't happen."
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Visitors coming to the nation's capital for President Barack Obama's second inauguration can't stay in the one place President Ronald

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