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Boston, MA, United States (AHN Sports) – Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick doesn’t agree with Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas’s decision not to attend a meeting with President Obama at the White House.

President Obama welcomed the Bruins to Washington earlier this week to honor the Stanley Cup champions. Thomas chose not to attend saying he was protesting a federal government that had “grown out of control, threatening the rights, liberties, and property of the people.”

Governor Patrick said Thomas was entitled to his views but said he was disappointed in his decision not to go to the White House on the “Ask the Governor” show on WTKK-FM.

“He’s a phenomenal hockey player and he’s entitled to his views, but it just feels to me like we’re losing in this country basic courtesy and grace,” Patrick said. “I didn’t think much of President Bush’s policies – two wars on a credit card, prescription drug benefit that we couldn’t afford, deficit out of control – but I always referred to him as ‘Mr. President.’ I stood when he came in the room,”

Thomas helped the Bruins win their first Stanley Cup in 39 years last season with a victory over the Vancouver Canucks in the finals.

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DC, Washington, United States (AHN) – The U.S. Conference of Mayors wrapped up its winter meeting Friday in Washington, D.C., with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stepping into controversies on same sex marriage and education.

Emanuel joined about 80 other mayors from across the nation in endorsing laws to give legal recognition to same sex marriage, along with the tax breaks and other benefits spouses can share.

The mayors signed on to a statement that said, “Our cities derive great strength from their diversity and gay and lesbian families are a crucial part. Studies have shown what we know through our hands-on experience that cities that celebrate and cultivate diversity are the places where creativity and ideas thrive.”

Emanuel supported the Illinois Legislature’s effort last year to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples.

He said New York did “a good thing” last June when state lawmakers legalized gay marriage.

In separate comments Friday, Emanuel discussed his plan to turn Chicago’s community colleges into training institutions for the city’s employers.

Currently, Chicago’s City Colleges have a graduation rate of about 7 percent and job prospects for graduates that are “not as high,” Emanuel said.

His plan calls for each of the city’s seven community colleges to operate with specialties, such as health care, transportation, hospitality and manufacturing.

In addition, employers would be brought in to develop curricula that would train the students to become their employees.

“I want it to have economic value” to attend college, Emanuel said at the downtown Washington hotel where about 250 mayors were meeting.

Turning colleges into job training institutions is controversial among some academics, who say a well-rounded education requires liberal arts courses that include literature, history and the arts.

Nevertheless, job creation and recovery from the economic disaster of the Great Recession were dominant themes throughout the meeting this week.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a report that said the nation’s metropolitan areas will struggle for five more years to regain jobs lost during the recession that started in September 2008.

“The recovery is very uneven across U.S. regions, with the southeastern and southwestern metro [areas that] were the most affected by the housing bubble looking ahead to years of recovery,” the report says.

U.S. nonfarm payrolls will grow about 1.3 percent this year, which is unlikely to reduce the unemployment rate below 8 percent, according to a report by IHS Global Insight.

The report predicts the nation will regain nearly half the jobs lost during the Great Recession by the end of 2012.

The mayors used the economic report to try to prod Congress to approve legislation that would create more jobs.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, president of the Conference of Mayors, said “Congress has jumped ship” in its obligation to stimulate the economy and employment.

However, Villaraigosa acknowledged cities will have a hard time squeezing money out of Congress at a time the federal government is trying to reduce its deficit by cutting spending.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – First time claims for unemployment compensation benefits during the week ending Dec. 31 dropped by 15,000 from the previous week to 372,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The less volatile 4-week moving average also fell, registering a decrease of 3,250 to 373,250 initial claims.

However, the advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate also fell. It dropped by 0.1 percentage point to 2.8 percent for the week ending Dec. 24, the most recent week for which such data is available.

Analysts say the decrease in filing for jobless benefits is a move in the right direction.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all unemployment programs for the week ending Dec. 17 dropped by 8,311 from the previous week to 7,223,203.

The unemployment rate for December was 8.5 percent.

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending Dec. 24 were:

• California (+16,490)
• Pennsylvania (+6,764)
• Michigan (+5,632)
• Kentucky (+5,263)
• Indiana (+5,084)

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Naypyidaw, Myanmar (AHN) – Myanmar President Thein Sein on Wednesday celebrated the country’s Independence Day and used the occasion to give credit to the former junta and the army for the country’s recent political reforms.

Stressing the day’s significance, Sein said it was the “Tatmadaw” military that directed the nation towards building a peaceful, modern and developed democratic one. “The army took step-by-step measures for writing a constitution in order to practice multi-party democracy,” Sein said in a message read by Vice President Sai Mauk Kham.

The nominally-civilian president also praised the military for fighting several wars with numerous armed ethnic rebel groups, adding that the army would continue to remain Myanmar’s most essential pillar. “A Tatmadaw of international standard is required for national defense,” he said.

The speech was delivered in front of 3,000 ministers and civil servants gathered in the capital Naypyidaw.

Sein also criticized 1988′s student uprising, which brought alive Aung San Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy movement, charging that it ruined the country.

The government also released at least 30 prisoners and commuted sentences of many others. However the opposition and the United States described the move unsatisfactory.

Sein’s decree granted amnesty to prisoners for the country’s peace and stability and national consolidation, stated the state-run newspaper. The decree commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment, restricted the maximum sentence to 30 years for all, limited terms of 20-30 years to 20 years and cut shorter sentences by 25 percent.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – It’s the economy that keeps Americans up at night, on edge and worried, revealed a new CNN/ORC International poll released Friday.

Some 70 percent said that things are not going well in the United States, with just three out of 10 saying things are okay, putting the state of the economy as the top worry and the most pressing issue heading into the new year.

More than half of those surveyed, or 57 percent, said the economy is the most important issue facing the country at present, and half named unemployment as the most important issue facing the economy. The deficit came in a very distant second with 16 percent.

Even as the payroll tax extension bill looms, only 7 percent of Americans named taxes as the most important economic issue in the United States.

The CNN poll of 1.085 American adults was conducted by ORC International via phone between Dec. 16 and Dec. 18.

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Paris, France (AHN) – Moody’s announced Friday it was downgrading the credit rating of all three of France’s top banks because of the difficulty they have borrowing money.

Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas went down one notch from a Aa2 rating to Aa3, which is the fourth-highest investment grade rating. Societe Generale fell from Aa3 to A1, the fifth-highest rating. The best rating a bank can get is AAA.

BNP is the largest bank, Societe Generale is second and Credit Agricole is third.

The credit rating agency also gave each of the three a negative outlook and warned that it might downgrade them again.

Moody’s said that not only had liquidity and funding conditions deteriorated at each of the banks, but that it was likely the situation would become worse because of further funding pressures from the European debt crisis, which has deteriorated.

The ratings cuts for these three banks follow Moody’s previous downgrades in September of Credit Agricole and Societe Generale.

Part of the problem with liquidity comes from the fact that many money market funds in the United States have refused to lend to European banks since the summer. That has made it difficult for eurozone banks to maintain borrowing in U.S. dollars.

The European Central Bank on Thursday announced new measures to make sure that eurozone banks do not run out of cash.

During the past few months, both BNP and Societe Generale announced asset sales aimed at reducing their reliance on short-term wholesale funding.

However, Moody’s cautioned that if too many European banks try to sell assets at the same time it would depress their value and result in selling them at a loss.

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Berlin, Germany (AHN) – German exports fell by a larger percentage than forecast for October because of lower demand from southern European markets affected by the economic crisis.

Exports fell by 3.6 percent in October compared to September. It was larger than the 1 percent drop expected and the largest decrease seen by Germany in six months. By contrast, exports only fell by 1 percent in September compared to August.

Germany is Europe’s largest economy and it has been the economic engine for the region during the ongoing economic crisis.

In addition, German imports fell by 1 percent, which was also more than expected.

Germany saw its trade surplus fall from $23 billion to $15.5 billion, which is about 5.5 percent of the nations’ gross domestic product. Moreover, the surplus in the current account fell to $13.8 billion from $21.4 billion a month earlier.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Black Friday is supposed to be all about rushing to stores, fighting the crowds and waiting in long lines to get the best deals. But this year, it was online shopping that really paid off for retailers and customers.

Online sales jumped 39.3 percent on Thanksgiving Day, and 24.3 percent on Black Friday compared to the same days last year, reports Coremetrics, which tracks real-time data from 500 retailers in the apparel, department store, health and beauty, and home goods categories.

Coremetrics reported that sales were strong in all categories. Online home goods sales jumped 48.8 percent, apparel sales soared 47.2 percent, and the health and beauty categories enjoyed a 34.2 percent increase year-over-year.

The jump in online sales was helped by Internet-only specials and exclusives. Leading shoppers online were free shipping deals.

Many brick and mortar stores, such as Best Buy, also offered their in-store doorbuster deals online for the first time this year.

Department stores saw the biggest gains in online shopping, with online sales rising 59 percent compared to last year.

While more were shopping online, they were not necessarily spending more. The average value per order remained relatively unchanged from last year at $190.10, and the number of items per order fell from 7.4 percent to 6.4 percent.

Those holding out for better deals may find them on Cyber Monday. According to the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org eHoliday survey, eight out of 10 online retailers plan to offer promotions on Cyber Monday. Data tracking firm ComScore forecasts record sales of $1.2 billion.

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United States (AHN) – 117 minutes

In theaters November 18, 2011

Rating: PG-13, Drama

Breaking Dawn never breaks down.

Instead, it holds up its end of the bargain for the Twilight series and its loyal fans, as The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 surfaces as the first-half of a finale with a one-year intermission.

The romantic modern-day vampire drama that kicked off the big-screen series, Twilight (2008), cast quite a spell, which is why we’re now four movies in out of five.

The ponderous first sequel, The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), dipped slightly in impact, but not so much as to remove the wanna-see factor from the next sequel, the ultra-romantic, revenge-driven The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), which not only restored the glory of the original but presented the series’ strongest metaphor yet for teen angst and offered the most accomplished performances yet from the three principals.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, which will be followed in a year’s time by Part 2, is (taking a page from the Harry Potter series) the first half of the final book — a 2008 best-seller, massive at 754 pages — in the series of supernatural horror-romance novels for Young Adults by Stephenie Meyer.

Breaking Dawn finds human Bella and vampire Edward — played, as if you didn’t know, by Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson — on their mixed-marriage honeymoon in Brazil, having postponed their decision to transform Bella into a vampire and thus join Edward’s extended, never-aging family.

Before long, Bella discovers that she’s pregnant. And the more Bella shows, the more emaciated she becomes, so concerned and desperate Edward turns to Bella’s rejected romantic suitor, Jacob, played again by Taylor Lautner, a werewolf who is estranged from his tribe.

Bella then experiences a nearly fatal childbirth when her half-vampire daughter Renesmee joins their family.

Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Kinsey, Gods and Monsters), who’s new to the series’ directorial chair and shot this and its successor back-to-back, tries to follow suit and fit in, aiming to please the series’ rabid fans, whom we’ve come to know as Twi-hards. And he delivers, inviting them as guests at the Bella-Edward nuptials and playing to their familiarity with the material with a surprising amount of unforced humor.

But once again, the film is let down by patently fake special effects, thus immediately undermining the overall illusion every single time that the wolves appear. And especially when they speak, which they should never do. If the level of CGI work isn’t improved by the time the next installment surfaces — one promising to contain more than its share of effects-heavy action sequences — the flight of this popular series could be in for one very bumpy landing.

Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, who has scripted all four of the Twilight films, sets the table for the series’ conclusion with a narrative that moves slowly and sometimes seems dramatically undercranked. To some degree, the level of urgency is diminished because of Breaking Dawn’s place in the series’ progression. That is, we know throughout that resolution will remain a long way off and that this is part of a connected and continuous double feature.

Still, the irresistibility of youthful passion remains the controlling metaphor of the series, as film number four takes its rightful place alongside its predecessors.

As for the three leads, they have certainly inhabited their roles long and often enough to make them feel lived-in, even if they sometimes seem to be ever so slightly on automatic pilot. Playing it safe in this way in a blockbuster series aimed at adoring fans may ultimately be the wise approach, but it also diminishes the film’s capacity for surprise and stimulation. But not to anywhere near a fatal degree.

And give Condon and Rosenberg credit for finding exactly the right place to end Part 1 and trigger the anticipation campaign for Part 2. This neat trick of releasing two halves of a story with the ending of the first part as a dynamic launching pad for the many-months-away second part is executed as slickly as it was in Kill Bill.

The penultimate PG-13-rated installment in an understandably and deservedly popular fantasy series, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 is so well handled and ends so effectively, this should be a very tough wait and a very long year for Twi-hards.

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Colombo, Sri Lanka (IRIN) – Cottage industries such as poultry farming, home gardening and bee-keeping are becoming increasingly popular among returnees in Sri Lanka’s former northern conflict zone as alternatives to regular jobs, officials say.

“We have seen a lot of applications for loans for poultry and home gardens,” Prem Kumar, area manager for the Bank of Ceylon, one of Sri Lanka’s two largest state-owned banks, told IRIN in northern Vavuniya District.

“When jobs become harder to find, people find it easier to start something on their own, especially so when they see there are opportunities to succeed.”

With job creation low , unemployment at about 20 percent and under-employment around 30 percent, cottage industries now play a vital role in generating income in the former war zone, say government officials.

“They have now become an important part of income-generation efforts,” Piencia Charles, the country’s top government official for Vavuniya District, explained.

High on the list is poultry farming. “The reason is because there is a ready-made market in the villages. You really don’t have to worry too much about transport,” Kanagasabapathi Udayakumar, the general manager of the Vavuniya North Multi-purpose Cooperative Society (MPC), noted.

A kilogramme of chicken sells for around Rs350 (US$3) and the MPC itself made a profit of around Rs80,000 ($730) when it recently sold a flock of 200 birds.

“This time we have around 500, targeting Christmas,” Udayakumar said.

In the village of Allankulam in Mullaitivu District, Selvakumar Arundha hopes to make a similar profit from her 100 birds. She started the farm with an initial investment of $270 pooled by six women in early 2010. Now each one earns about $2.50 per day from the farm.

“Most of us used the money we earned from taking part in cash-for-work programmes,” she said.

Another group of women has formed a similar venture involving a small vegetable plot.

“Next time, we hope to try tobacco. It will give us a better profit,” Thangarasa Sivakolandy, one of the members, said.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is supporting 30 single female-headed households in the Vavuniya North region to set up home paddy parboiling operations by January 2012.

Under the scheme, each woman will be given a grant of Rs75,000 ($680) to buy the large pots needed for the parboiling and build a small storage area.

According to ILO officials, the women will be linked to five small mills near their villages, also supported by the organization, which will buy the paddy. A kilogramme of paddy will make them a profit of around Rs5 and the mills will buy the paddy for at least two years. ILO plans to fund 10 such mills and 60 households.

The MPC’s Udayakumar sees another advantage in popularizing parboiling and milling within the region. “We won’t fall prey to the price mafia,” he said.

During the last paddy harvest, outside buyers drove down prices because of the lack of processing facilities in the region. “Farmers could not keep the harvest so they were buying at prices sometimes 40 percent below market rates.”

Bee-keeping potential

“With over 50,000 hectares of jungle in the Vavuniya North Division, there may be potential to develop a bee-keeping and honey-producing industry,” the ILO said in a recent project update.

One person could manage 10 hives easily, which would provide an income of about Rs72,000 ($650) during the two annual harvesting seasons, Kiruja Sivasubaramanium, an ILO official working on the project, explained.

Meanwhile, Udayakumar said that once the roads connecting remote villages such as Nedunkerni became more easily accessible, the importance of cottage industries would increase even more, at least in the short term.

“Now, because of transport difficulties, it is very hard to take fresh produce like vegetables to the south. Once the road is better everyone will want to grow vegetables, which fetch higher prices than paddy,” he said.

A few months earlier, eggplant became a particularly popular commercial vegetable in Nedunkerni and Olumadu but soon almost everyone stopped growing them.

“Because buyers from outside were making a killing, buying at Rs10 per kilo here and selling at between Rs30 to 40 [elsewhere],” Udayakumar said.

According to the UN , more than 380,000 war-displaced have returned to Sri Lanka’s former conflict zone, making the re-establishment of local livelihoods a key component to recovery efforts.

ap/ds/mw

– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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