With their original school still being treated as a crime scene, the students will begin attending classes at a refurbished school in the neighboring town of Monroe on Thursday. Law enforcement officers have been guarding the new school, and by the reckoning of police, it is "the safest school in America."

Still, Newtown Superintendent Janet Robinson said officials will do their best to make the students feel at ease.

"We will go to our regular schedule," she said. "We will be doing a normal day."

On Wednesday, the students and their families were welcomed at an open house at their new school, which was formerly the Chalk Hill Middle School in Monroe but renamed as the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Students received gift boxes with toys inside and shared joyful reunions with teachers.

One father, Vinny Alvarez, took a moment to thank his third-grade daughter's teacher, Courtney Martin, who protected the class from a rampaging gunman by locking her classroom door and keeping the children in a corner.

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The Broadway League reported Wednesday that the nine-year-old "Wicked" took in a whopping $2,947,172 over nine performances last week, which is the highest single-week gross of any show in Broadway history.

It squeaked by the old record - $5,382 more to be exact - set by "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," which earned $2,941,790 over nine performances last year during the holidays. Back then, the webslinger had swiped the title from "Wicked." (For the record, the "Spider-Man" musical earned $2,716,990 last week over nine shows.)

Both musicals' huge hauls reflect the use of premium seating, in which producers charge higher prices for certain days and certain seats. "Wicked" managed to command as much as $300 for a top premium seat - second only to the "Book of Mormon," which has a top premium of $477. The average paid admission was $181 to "Wicked."

But making its feat more impressive is the fact that it is performed at the Gershwin Theatre, has about 100 seats less than the 1,930-seat Foxwoods Theatre, home of the superhero musical.

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The accident prompted some stars including the teen heartthrob himself on Wednesday to renew their calls for tougher laws to rein in their pursuers, though previous urgings have been stymied by First Amendment protections.

In a statement, Bieber said his prayers were with the photographer's family. Ironically, the singer wasn't even in the Ferrari on Tuesday.

"Hopefully this tragedy will finally inspire meaningful legislation and whatever other necessary steps to protect the lives and safety of celebrities, police officers, innocent public bystanders, and the photographers themselves," Bieber said in the statement released by Island Def Jam Music Group.

Authorities have withheld the name of the photographer, killed after being hit by a Toyota Highlander, pending notification of relatives.

Much of Hollywood was abuzz about the death, including Miley Cyrus, who sent several tweets critical of some of the actions of paparazzi and lamenting that the unfortunate accident was "bound to happen."

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The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his "runaway bride," Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year's Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old "Playmate of the Month" in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year's Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner's been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

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Los Angeles police officer James Stoughton says the man died Tuesday evening at a hospital. Stoughton says Bieber was not in the car at the time.

Sgt. Rudy Lopez told the Los Angeles Times ( HTTP://LAT.MS/ZTTUCT ) that the pop star's friend was driving the car when it was pulled over for a traffic stop. It was parked on a busy street when the photographer arrived.

Police say the man was struck by a car as he returned to his own car.

Stoughton says no charges are expected against the motorist who hit the man.

A call to a Bieber publicist was not immediately returned.

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In an update Monday on Clinton's condition, her doctors say the blood clot did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage. The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear.

Clinton's doctors say that to help dissolve the clot, they are treating her with blood thinners. They say she will be released once the medication dose has been established.

In their update, the doctors say the 65-year-old secretary of state is making excellent progress and is in good spirits.

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The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee report said the White House was only responsible for a minor change. Some Republicans had questioned whether the presidential staff rewrote the talking points for political reasons.

The committee, headed by independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, also said the director of national intelligence has been stonewalling the panel in holding back a promised timeline of the talking point changes.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11 attack. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said she used the talking points to say in television interviews on Sept. 16 that it may have been a protest that got out of hand.

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"We must extend the fight against the enemy's ideological and cultural infiltration," Kim said in an October speech at the headquarters of his immensely powerful internal security service. Kim, who became North Korea's supreme leader after the death of his father a year ago, called upon his vast security network to "ruthlessly crush those hostile elements."

Over the past year, Kim has intensified a border crackdown that has attempted to seal the once-porous 1,420-kilometer (880-mile) frontier with China, smugglers and analysts say, trying to hold back the onslaught.

The assault that he fears? It's being waged with cheap televisions rigged to receive foreign broadcasts, and with smuggled mobile phones that — if you can get a Chinese signal along the border — can call the outside world. Very often, it arrives in the form of wildly popular South Korean soap operas smuggled in on DVDs or computer thumb drives.

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The rapper announced at a concert Sunday night that his girlfriend is pregnant. He told the crowd of more than 5,000 at Revel Resort's Ovation Hall in song form: "Now you having my baby."

The crowd roared.

Most of the Kardashian clan tweeted about the news, including Kim's sisters and mother. Kourtney Kardashian wrote: "Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!"

West also told concertgoers to congratulate his "baby mom" and that this was the "most amazing thing."

Representatives for West and Kardashian didn't immediately respond to emails about the pregnancy.

The rapper and reality TV star went public in March. Kardashian, 32, is about 12 weeks along, according to TMZ.

Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.

West's Sunday night show was his third consecutive performance at Revel. He took the stage for nearly two hours, performing hits like "Good Life," "Jesus Walks" and "Clique" in an all-white ensemble with two band mates.

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President Barack Obama flew back to Washington from Hawaii after telephoning congressional leaders from his Christmas vacation perch. Once back, he set up a meeting with leaders of both parties at the White House late Friday to make a fresh attempt to find a solution before Monday night's deadline.

A look at why it's so hard for Republicans and Democrats to compromise on urgent matters of taxes and spending, and what happens if they fail to meet their deadline:

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NEW YEAR'S HEADACHE

Partly by fate, partly by design, some scary fiscal forces come together at the start of 2013 unless Congress and Obama act to stop them. They include:

— Some $536 billion in tax increases, touching nearly all Americans, because various federal tax cuts and breaks expire at year's end.

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According to reports, around 250 supporters gathered outside Maine City Hall to cheer the first couple to marry under the new law -- Steven Bridges, 42, and Michael Snell, 53. According to the Guardian, "a group in the crowd sang the Beatles song 'All You Need Is Love,' accompanied by several musicians playing brass horns, and many carried signs with such slogans as 'America's new day begins in Maine' and 'Love one another.'"

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But the files, which previously had been heavily redacted, do not contain any new information about Monroe's death 50 years ago. Letters and news clippings included in the file show the bureau was aware of theories the actress had been killed, but they do not show that any effort was undertaken to investigate the claims. Los Angeles authorities concluded Monroe's death was a probable suicide.

Recently obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, the updated FBI files do show the extent the agency was monitoring Monroe for ties to communism in the years before her death in August 1962.

The records reveal that some in Monroe's inner circle were concerned about her association with Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who was disinherited from his wealthy family over his leftist views.

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His hard life and wartime trauma provided the basis for a prolific 50-year career as a consummate Oscar-nominated character actor, playing everyone from a Nazi colonel to the pope to Dustin Hoffman's would-be suitor in "Tootsie."

Durning, who died Monday at age 89 in New York, got his start as an usher at a burlesque theater in Buffalo, N.Y. When one of the comedians showed up too drunk to go on, Durning took his place. He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as he heard the audience laughing.

He told The Associated Press in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working. "They're going to carry me out, if I go," he said.

Durning's longtime agent and friend, Judith Moss, told The Associated Press that he died of natural causes in his home in the borough of Manhattan.

"Not only was Charlie a World War II hero but he was also a hero to his family. Charlie loved Christmas and if he could have chosen a time to pass, he would have chosen this day," said a statement from his stepdaughter, Anita Gregory, released Tuesday by Ana Martinez, spokeswoman for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

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The American was identified as Pae Jun Ho in a brief dispatch issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang. News reports in the U.S. and South Korea said Pae is known in his home state of Washington as Kenneth Bae, a 44-year-old tour operator of Korean descent.

An expert said he is likely to become a bargaining chip for the North, an attempt to draw the U.S. into talks. Five other Americans known to have been detained in North Korea since 2009 were all eventually released.

North Korean state media said Pae arrived in the far northeastern city of Rajin on Nov. 3 as part of a tour.

Rajin is part of a special economic zone not far from Yanji, China, that has sought to draw foreign investors and tourists over the past year. Yanji, home to many ethnic Korean Chinese, also serves as a base for Christian groups that shelter North Korean defectors.

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The buyer, IntercontinentalExchange, a 12-year-old exchange that deals in investing contracts known as futures, said Thursday that little would change for the trading floor in Manhattan's financial district.

The NYSE dates to 1792, when 24 brokers and merchants traded stocks under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street. But its importance today is mostly symbolic. Most trading is done on computers that match thousands of orders a second.

"The cash equities business in America has effectively been obliterated," said Thomas Caldwell, chairman of Caldwell Securities in Toronto and a shareholder in the New York exchange's parent company, NYSE Euronext.

He said that the jewel of the deal is not the New York exchange but Liffe, a futures exchange founded in London.

"The original New York Stock Exchange, it's got a brand name, it's got recognition, but as a business it's a very small part of this thing," Caldwell said.

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Heavy snow and strong winds combined for blizzard conditions in some areas from Kansas to Wisconsin - and guaranteed a white Christmas in some places - after the storm blanketed the Rocky Mountains earlier in the week.

Iowa and Nebraska took a heavy hit from the storm, with nearly a foot of snow in Des Moines and 8.6 inches in Omaha, Neb.

Thomas Shubert, a clerk at a store in Gretna near Omaha, said his brother drove him to work in his 4-by-4 truck but that some of his neighbors weren't so fortunate.

"I saw some people in my neighborhood trying to get out. They made it a few feet, and that was about it," Shubert said Thursday. "I haven't seen many cars on the road. There are a few brave souls out, but mostly trucks and plows."

By sunrise in Des Moines, the snow was starting to taper off, but that would not be the end of it, warned Kevin Skow, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the city.

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The drummer of the Grammy Award winners will host "Serious Boredom," a new free-form monthly show on the satellite radio provider's SiriusXMU channel.

"They asked me if I was interested in doing the show," Carney said in a phone interview. "It never really crossed my mind, but I decided I wanted to do it, to give it a shot. I don't have any format. I can play whatever I want. Being able to play stuff that's interesting to Dan (Auerbach) and I and stuff I'm into at the moment. I think it's a cool opportunity."

Carney kicks off the show at 8 p.m. EST Thursday with music he was into in high school, a mix of standard indie rock leavened with Captain Beefheart. Carney hopes to have a theme for each show, airing at 8 on the first Thursday of each month beginning in January, that revolves around a label or a city.

The 32-year-old Nashville resident wants to emulate the adventurousness of the college radio format without the long-windedness of its DJs.

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The pop singer said in a Twitter post Tuesday night that she's "so so so sorry" for anyone affected by the tragedy.

Earlier Tuesday, Ke$ha tweeted that she had her own issues with "Die Young" due to the lyrics, but that she was "FORCED TO" sing them. That tweet was deleted a short time later.

Ke$ha's spokesman said the 25-year-old had no comment Wednesday morning.

"Die Young" is intended as a party anthem and is No. 3 on this week's Billboard Hot 100 chart. But radio stations began to pull it and other songs with potentially upsetting lyrics after 27 people, including 20 children, were killed Friday at an elementary school.

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The 23-year-old singer is stepping out into a solo career after performing with a band called Hey Monday. Her victory over Scottish native Terry McDermott and long-bearded Nicholas David was announced at the end of a two-hour show Tuesday.

"The Voice" has grown into a hit for NBC and was the key factor in the network's surprising success this fall.

The show's status was affirmed by the stream of hitmakers who performed on the finale. They included Rihanna, Bruno Mars, the Killers, Smokey Robinson and Peter Frampton.

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The nation's largest gun rights organization made its first public statements Tuesday after a self-imposed media blackout that left many wondering how it would respond to the killings. In its statement, the group said its members were, quoting, "shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders."

The group also said it wanted to give families time to mourn before making its first public statements. The organization pledged "to help to make sure this never happens again" and has scheduled a news conference for Friday.

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