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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. employers likely kept hiring last month at a modest but steady pace, despite tense negotiations that pushed the economy to the brink of the fiscal cliff.
• Economists forecast that employers added 155,000 jobs in December, according to a survey by FactSet. That would be slightly higher than November's 148,000. The unemployment rate is projected to remain at 7.7 percent.
• Stable hiring would mean the job market held up during the talks between Congress and the White House over tax increases and spending cuts that were not resolved until the new year.
• A trio of encouraging reports Thursday on private hiring and layoffs suggested companies did not panic last month, although the Labor Department report will offer a more accurate measure of how businesses responded to the uncertainty in Washington.
• "Given that we have restraints, the labor market data do appear to be improving," said Dana Saporta, an economist at Credit Suisse.
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• MONROE, Conn. (AP) -- Sarah Caron made her son his favorite pancakes for breakfast and walked the second-grader to the top of the driveway for the school bus.
• "I hugged him a lot longer than normal, until he said, 'Mommy, please,'" she said. "And then he got on the bus, and he was OK."
• It was 7-year-old William's first day of school since last month's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, and his mother tried to make the day as normal as possible. But it was harder than usual to say goodbye.
• William was among more than 400 students who escaped a gunman's rampage that killed 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook on Dec. 14. On Thursday, the returning students settled in at their old, familiar desks but in a different school in a different town.
• Students, teachers and administrators were met by a large police presence out

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