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As graying baby boomers begin to consider their funeral needs, they're driving a trend toward less traditional, more personalized memorial services. But not everyone in the death-care industry is embracing those innovative changes.

Any New Orleans piano player worth his fingers owes a debt to Henry Roeland Byrd, aka Professor Longhair. The late musician's home is still standing on Terpsichore Street, but it's in serious disrepair.

The "fiscal cliff" wasn't the first time Vice President Joe Biden has helped carry a deal across the finish line. Though critics dismiss him as a gaffe-prone windbag, he has reached across the aisle many times to get compromises through Congress.

The cast of lawmakers and their leaders in the new 113th Congress is mostly unchanged. The same can be said for Capitol Hill's never-ending drama over taxes, deficits and spending.

The state has the largest pension-fund shortfall in the nation, with about $96 billion of liability. Lawmakers are running up against a tight deadline: A new Legislature will be sworn in next week. State employees swarmed the Capitol this week to protest the underfunding of their pensions, as well as pending legislation on the issue.

When President Obama addressed the country on New Year's Eve in the middle of negotiations over the "fiscal cliff," he warned Republicans that any government spending cuts would have to be accompanied by tax increases. If they thought otherwise, the president said, "then they've got another thing coming." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase was originally "to have another think coming."

Four people are dead inside an Aurora, Colo., home Saturday following a standoff with an "armed and dangerous" man holding hostages, police say. Aurora is the Denver suburb where a gunman opened fire in a movie theater last July, killing 12 and injuring many more.

Four NFL wild-card playoff games are on this weekend, including Sunday's anticipated quarterback matchup between Washington and Seattle; while our observer ponders the fate of the Indianapolis Colts.

The Massachusetts Republican left Congress this week after losing in a contentious race to Democrat Elizabeth Warren. But if John Kerry is confirmed as the next secretary of state, Scott Brown could be back on the campaign trail in weeks.

At a new school for midwives, students learn old arts, like massaging bellies, while also studying gynecology, obstetrics and nursing. Officials hope a new generation of professional midwives will help reduce the pressures on Mexican hospitals overwhelmed by births that, in the past, would have taken place at home.