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• "I believe we need to raise the debt ceiling, but if we don't raise it without a plan to get out of debt, all of us should be fired," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
• Last week's deal to avert the combination of end-of-year tax increases and spending cuts known as the "fiscal cliff" held income tax rates steady for 99 percent of Americans but left some other major pieces of business unresolved.
• By late February or early March, the Treasury Department will run out of options to cover the nation's debts and could begin defaulting on government loans unless Congress raises the legal borrowing limit, or debt ceiling. Economists warn that a default could trigger a global recession.
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• CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) -- Nearly six months after a bloody rampage in a Colorado movie theater left 12 people dead, prosecutors will go to court Monday to outline their case against the suspect, James Holmes.
• Holmes is charged with more than 160 counts including murder and attempted murder.
• Investigators say he was wearing body armor and a gas mask when he tossed two gas canisters and then opened fire in a theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora on July 20. A midnight showing of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises" had just begun.
• In addition to the 12 dead, 70 were wounded.
• Many of the survivors and family members of the dead are expected to attend the preliminary hearing, and court officials expect an overflow crowd of reporters and spectators.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- In Connecticut and Colorado, scenes of the most deadly U.S. mass shootings in 2012, people were less enthusiastic about buying new guns at the end of the year than in most other states, according to an Associated Press analysis of new FBI data. The biggest surges in background checks for people who want to carry or buy guns occurred in states in the South and West.
• The latest government figures reflect huge increases across the U.S. in the num

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