Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Roseanne Barr has filed the official paperwork necessary to run for the Green Party nomination for president of the United States.

Barr filed her paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 25. Her filing creates a four-way race for the Green nomination, which is to be decided at the Green Party Nomination Convention in July.

The comedian tweeted Thursday, “I am running for Green Party nominee for POTUS. I am an official candidate. I am4 the Greening of America & the world. Green=peace/justice.”

‘I will run until the convention in July in Baltimore, I fully expect Jill Stein 2b the nominee & I will support her, but till then-I’ll serve,” Barr continued in several tweets that followed her announcement.

Barr’s platform, as detailed in a tweet, is a promise to institute “#Europeanstyle” single payer healthcare within the first 100 days of her term, and to forgive all credit card and mortgage debt “by kicking out the FED-those who all this fake debt is owed.”

In May 2010, in a campaign announcement, Barr outlined a more detailed platform. “First, to make war illegal and legalize hemp and marijuana. Second, change the demographics of government to include more women. Third, outlaw–how do we say this politely–outlaw bull. Yes, that’s it. Outlaw bull.”

On the Green Party website, Barr expressed her support for the Occupy Wall Street Movement and said, “Both the Democratic and Republican parties are bought and paid for by corporate America and cater to the needs of the highest bidder as opposed to the people the claim to represent. I cannot be bought.”

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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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Kabul, Afghanistan (AHN) – Allied forces suffered a day of heavy losses in Afghanistan Thursday in a helicopter crash that killed six U.S. Marines, and an attack Friday that killed four French service members, raising the possibility of France withdrawing its troops early.

The Marines were killed after their CH 53 helicopter crashed in Helmand province, according to military officials. The NATO-lead forces reported no enemy activity in the areas, but the Taliban claimed credit for bringing the copter down.

In a separate incident, an Afghan soldier killed four French service members and injured 15 others in eastern Afghanistan, French officials reported. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was suspending French training operations and combat help as a result.

Friday’s latest attack was the latest in a series of attacks on NATO forces by members of the Afghan army.

The cause of the helicopter crash, that occurred around midnight Kabul time (2:30 p.m.EST Thursday), is still under investigation.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen paid homage to those killed and injured, saying it was a “very sad day” for ISAF troops in Afghanistan and for France.

NATO is scheduled to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by the end on 2014.

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Ottawa, Canada (AHN Sports) – The Ottawa Senators are the hottest team in the NHL right now and are pushing the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins in the Northeast Division.

The Senators are 8-1-1 in their last 10 games and are looking to add another win Monday night against Winnipeg.

The Senators have beaten the Jets twice this season and will be going for their fifth straight win.

Ottawa is just a point behind Boston in the Northeast and are featuring a balanced attack with strong offense and good goaltending.

Senators goalie Craig Anderson has gone 11-2-2 in his last 15 starts and had a stretch of 129:28 without yielding a goal during a recent three-game road trip.

Anderson recorded his first shutout of the season in a 3-0 win over the New York Rangers on Thursday and followed it up by making 33 saves and stopping three shootout chances in a 3-2 win at Montreal on Saturday.

The Senators offense is being led by captain Daniel Alfredsson, Jason Spezza and Milan Michalek

Alfredsson scored the winning goal in the shootout against Montreal and has rebounded from injuries. Spezza is once again one of the league’s scoring leaders and Michalek is finally the player the Senators thought they got nearly three years ago in the Dany Heatley trade.

Spezza was quick to credit the entire roster for coming together to turn things around after some disappointing seasons.

“We have great chemistry in the room and we have performed well because of it,” he told The Ottawa Citizen. “There are a lot of unselfish players, guys playing different roles on different nights. Everybody has stepped up, and that’s why we’re in a playoff spot. We’ve had contributions from everyone.

“You can look back at big goals in big games by different guys. There have been some unlikely heroes along the way, and that has a lot to do with chemistry.”

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Cairo, Egypt David Rosenberg / The Med – It’s not just Facebook and Twitter that have enjoyed surging on-line activity in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the past year. E-commerce is growing, too, analysts say as more and more people in the Arab world use the Internet and take out credit cards.

A report by Euromonitor International, the market research company, estimates that for three key economies in the Arab world-Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt-Internet retail sites pushed past the $1 billion for the first time last year.

In a forthcoming study, Euromonitor sees in-line retail sales doubling over the next five years to just over $2 billion. Saudi Arabia will account for more than half of all on-line sales, but the proportion will drop as Egypt and the UAE pace the growth, figures showed.

“Euromonitor International forecasts very healthy growth for Internet retailing in the UAE and the region as a whole,” Research Manager Sana Toukan said in e-mailed remarks to The Media Line. “This will be pushed by a rise in the number of credit cards in circulation [and] an improving economy, which will translate into a higher employment rate, meaning that people will have less time on their hands to visit shops.”

The rise in on-line sales came as much of the Middle East contends with slowing growth due to Arab Spring turmoil and more recently a slowing global economy. But Business Monitor International (BMI) says retail sales, whether it’s in all brick-and-mortar malls or over the Internet, are being spurred by rising disposable incomes; population growth especially in cities, the improving status of women, a growing middle class, expatriate wealth and the development of a modern retail infrastructure.

BMI expects retail sales in five MENA markets – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Bahrain and Egypt – will grow 11 percent this year to $139.8 billion. Between now and 2015, they will climb by nearly 50 percent. Egyptian store sales growing about 60 percent from 2011 through 2015, it estimates.

The 15 percent increase in e-commerce sales charted by Euromonitor over 2010 wasn’t phenomenal by global e-commerce standards, where Christmas sales in the sluggish U.S. economy alone rose by about the same percentage. But last year’s growth in the MENA was paced by Egypt, which saw retail e-commerce sales jump by two thirds even as its economy was paralyzed by political unrest, according to Euromonitor figures.

Euromonitor predicts that Egypt’s on-line sales will jump by 3.5 times over the next five years to $447.3 million in 2016.

Analysts say Egypt’s virtual shopping spree does not come as much as a surprise. While Internet penetration and credit card use remain low, the Arab Spring generated an efflorescence of social media use among the country’s middle class as a way to tune in to events at Tahrir Square and around the country. The Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government estimates that of 15 million new users to join Facebook across the MENA region in the first 10 months of the year, more than 4 million were Egyptian.

Social media has served as a pathway into other Internet applications, with government and business both taking advantage in Egypt and elsewhere of growing Internet usage, Fadi Salem, director of the Governance and Innovation Program at the Dubai School of Government, told The Media Line.

Euromonitor’s Toukan said the rise of social media even made its impact in places like the UAE, which didn’t experience any of the political gyrations of the Arab Spring and is home to some of the world’s biggest and most lavish shopping malls. Albeit from a low base of $227 million, on-line sales in the Emirates grew 14.5 percent last year, hastening from 9 percent in 2010, Euromonitor said.

“A rise in the number of on-line stores coupled with a rise in the number of credit cards in circulation, higher number of people using social networking sites and thus seeing advertisements for online stores, have all pushed sales in 2011 in the UAE,” Toukan said.

Right now, more than half of all on-line transactions in Egypt are done through the more complicated and less flexible system of pre-paid cards, according to a survey of 1,000 Internet users from around MENA conducted for Onecard, a Saudi company that offers on-line payment accounts. The survey says the next most popular method is credit cards and cash on delivery.

But credit card usage in Egypt is growing, easing the way for on-line shopping. Synovate, a market research firm, found that increasingly number of middle and upper middle class Egyptians are using commercial banks, as against the government postal bank. More importantly they are more likely than before to take out a credit card – 72 percent had one in 2010, compared with 66 percent the year before, according to its latest figures.

Nevertheless, e-commerce has a long way to go in the region before it catches up to the level of web shopping in the West. The chief barriers remain low usage of credit cards, which are the main way people buy on-line, and deep concerns about credit card fraud. Indeed, the Onecard survey found that fears of credit card theft and fraud were by far the highest concerns among Internet users it polled.

A tit-for-tat war between Israeli and allegedly Saudi hackers over the past week may exacerbate those concerns.

Allegedly Saudi hackers, identifying themselves as Group XP, claimed more than a week ago to have gained access to 400,000 Israeli credit card accounts, although the Bank of Israel said the number of compromised accounts was far less than that. The attack prompted a group of Israelis to claim they had obtained the records of thousands of credit cards used in Saudi shopping web sites and threatened they would disclose the material if “the [Saudi] leaks continue.” Talaat Hafez, secretary-general of the media office for the Saudi banking authority, on Tuesday denied any accounts had been compromised.

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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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Washington DC, United States (AHN) – Average fixed mortgage rates in the United States end 2011 near all-time record lows. The 30-year fixed home loan exits the year at 3.95 percent.

According to Freddie Mac, the rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has stayed at or below 4 percent for nine consecutive weeks. It averaged above 5 percent just twice in 2011.

For the week ending Dec. 29, the 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 3.95 percent, up from 3.91 percent the prior week, and below 4.86 percent in the same period a year ago.

Rates on 15-year fixed mortgages averaged 3.24 percent, up from last week’s 3.21 percent, and below 4.20 percent a year ago.

Mortgage rates hit historic lows in 2011, but did little to help the ailing housing market, which is set to close out 2011 as the worst on record for new home sales.

Tight credit, stringent credit standards, and uncertainty about the economy kept many Americans from taking advantage of the never before seen, record low, mortgage rates.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – New home sales jumped in November from October. But, 2011 is still on track to end the year as the worst year for home sales in history.

On Friday, the Commerce Department said new home sales rose 1.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 315,000. The scant rise is less than half the 700,000 new homes that economists say should be sold to sustain a healthy housing market.

The number is also below the 323,000 homes sold in 2010, the worst year for sales on records dating back to 1963.

While new home sales account for just a fraction of the housing market, they do have a big impact on the economy. According to the National Association of Home Builders, each new home built creates about three jobs for a year, and generates roughly $90,000 in taxes.

Despite historic low mortgage rates, the housing markets remains depressed and is a long way from fully recovering.

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Indianapolis, IN, United States (AHN Sports) – Butler dipped into its bag of magic tricks a little early this season.

The Bulldogs, who are known for their heart stopping runs through the NCAA tournament in March, used an Andrew Smith tip-in with one second to play to beat in-state rival Purdue 67-65 in the Close the Gap Crossroads Classic, Saturday, in Indianapolis.

“The play was for Roosevelt (Jones) to get the ball and drive it. If he had an open lane for the layup, go for it, if not, he’s just going to get it up on the rim and hopefully we could get an offensive rebound,” said Smith. “Fortunately Purdue did not block out and I was right there and the ball came right to me so I was able to tip it in.”

The win snaps a three game losing streak for Butler. For Purdue, it’s another tough loss.

It’s the second time this month the Boilermakers have squandered a double-digit lead. Purdue lost to Xavier, December 3rd after being ahead by 19.

The Boilers were up by 15 at one point, but allowed the Bulldogs to mount a comeback.

“We had them,” said Purdue guard Lewis Jackson. “Give Butler credit though, we punched them in the mouth, they punched back. We punched them and as soon as we think it was over, they kept fighting.”

Butler’s fight was a team effort. Smith and Kameron Woods each scored 12, but no other Bulldog was in double figures. Erik Fromm helped them stay afloat when Purdue ballooned the lead in the first half. He scored all nine of his points in the opening frame and Khyle Marshall scored nine, as well.

But, it was Butler’s defense that turned the tide. The Bulldogs held Purdue to just 20-percent shooting in the second half (6-29) after going 20-36 in the first. Purdue didn’t score a field goal in the final 8:48.

“It’s amazing when the ball goes in it looks like you have great offense and when it doesn’t, you have bad offense,” said Purdue head coach Matt Painter.

“I thought Rob Hummel had some good looks that didn’t go down. I thought Ryne Smith had a couple of looks that didn’t go down and in the first half they did go down. So I think it really compounds at that point to you are running bad offense, when in reality Butler is pretty good on D and we had some shots that just didn’t go down.”

Hummel finished with a game-high 16-points, but just four in the second half. Ryne Smith added 14 including three triples, but was held scoreless in the second frame.

Lewis Jackson added 13-points, six assists, and seven rebounds. But, made just one of two free-throws with ten seconds left that kept the game tied and opened the door for Smith’s heroics.

“It hurts,” Jackson said. “I’m at a loss for words. It hurts right now.”

Purdue (9-3) heads back to West Lafayette to play IPFW, Tuesday.

“We felt like we should have won the last two games that we lost,” said Painter. “I think we have a positive to look at, but we don’t have a lot to show for it.”

Butler (5-6) travels west for its next two games, first to Gonzaga then to Stanford. Butler captain Ronald Nored thinks the win against Purdue can serve as a catalyst for turning the team’s slow start around.

“Hopefully we learn from this. We learn from the things we did well, the things that led to winning and then also grow from the things that we didn’t do well, “he said. “I think if we do that and take this game and ride along with it, ride along with the things we did well, it can change things.”

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage stayed near its record low for the sixth consecutive week. But, the historically low rates have done little to goose the ailing housing market.

On Thursday, mortgage giant Freddie Mac said the rate on the 30-year home loan edged down to 3.99 percent from 4 percent the previous week. It dropped to a record low of 3.94 nine weeks ago, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage ticked down to 3.27 percent from 3.30 percent. It also hit a record low nine weeks earlier when it fell to 3.26 percent.

For all of but two weeks in 2011, rates have been below 5 percent. Yet this year may turn out to be the worst for home sales in 14 years.

The record low rates have not helped homes sales. Sales of previously owned homes are just a hair ahead on last year’s figures, which were the worst in 13 years. In addition, new homes sales appear to be headed for their worst year on records dating back 50 years.

High unemployment and tight bank lending standards have made it much harder for potential home owners to qualify for loans. Also, many Americans are reluctant to pour money into homes that could lose value over the next several years.

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