Saturday Night Live” paid tribute to the children and adults killed at a Connecticut elementary school.

Not known for taking anything seriously or tenderly, the show made a sweet departure in its opening moments. Rather than the usual comical opening, a children’s choir appeared on camera and angelically sang “Silent Night.”

Then the members of the New York City Children’s Chorus bellowed out the show’s time-honored introduction: “Live from New York, it’s ‘Saturday Night!'”

Later in the show, actor Samuel L. Jackson made a distinctive contribution of his own in a cameo appearance. He pretended to be miffed at being cut short as a guest on the mock talk show “What Up with That?” and dropped a couple of vulgarities, including an F-bomb and the term sometimes shortened to “B.S.”

An effort to cut costs and ease prison overcrowding by paroling more Nebraska inmates is falling short, thanks to a surge of new inmates and offenders who are serving longer sentences.

Prison officials tell The Associated Press that the department is requesting $5.1 million from lawmakers to hire new staff and reopen a housing unit at the Omaha Correctional Center that closed last year.

The number of parolees has surged from nearly 850 in fiscal year 2010 to more than 1,300 in fiscal year 2012. But the number of new prisoners has grown as well, and a Department of Correctional Services researcher says inmates are also serving longer sentences.

Omaha Sen. Brad Ashford says the increase is due to more incarcerated sex offenders and inmates sentenced for gun-related crimes.

The former president of the Nebraska Farm Bureau has been honored by another state agriculture group.

The Nebraska Corn Growers Association gave Keith Olsen its Golden Ear award to recognize everything he has done for agriculture.

Olsen, of Grant, led the Farm Bureau for nine years before deciding to step down last year.

The Corn Growers’ Carl Sousek says Olsen had an extremely positive impact on agriculture during the time that he served the state.

Olsen’s family farms in Perkins County and raises wheat, cord and dry peas.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The question surfaces each time a mass murder unfolds: Will this one change the political calculus in Washington against tougher gun control?

The answer was “no” after the Virginia Tech killings, the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords, the Colorado movie-theater attack, the Wisconsin Sikh temple shootings, and more.

But now?

The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., stands as a possible tipping point after Washington’s decade-long aversion even to talking about stricter gun laws.

President Barack Obama says it’s time for the country to come together and “take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

It remains to be seen whether Sandy Hook will break the usual cycle of universal shock fading into political reality.

What do YOU think? Is Gun Control the answer? Or is the problem deeper than that? Let us know!

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Backers of new laws that legalized marijuana in Washington and Colorado were cautiously optimistic after President Barack Obama said Uncle Sam wouldn’t pursue pot users in those states.

Following the November votes in Washington and Colorado the Justice Department reiterated that marijuana remains illegal under federal law, but had been vague about what its specific response would be.

In a Barbara Walters interview airing Friday on ABC, President Barack Obama said: “It does not make sense from a prioritization point of view” to focus on drug use in states where it is now legal.

Marijuana activists were relieved at Obama’s comments, but had questions about how regulation will work. They said even if individual users aren’t charged with crimes, marijuana producers and sellers could be subject to prosecution, civil forfeiture and other legal roadblocks.

The company that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Mexican pop superstar Jenni Rivera is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

It has had two planes seized by the agency this year.

DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirms the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona. She declined to discuss details.

The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino who has a long and checkered legal past, including convictions for fraud, one as part of a sweeping drug investigation in Florida in the late 1980s.

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground while flying in Mexico Sunday morning.