Harry Potter box office to top $1 billion Read more: http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/Movies/2011/07/30/Harry-Potter-box-office-to-top-1-billion

The new Harry Potter film was expected to hit the magic $1 billion mark at the box office this weekend, The Hollywood Reporter said Saturday.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" had grossed $926 million worldwide heading into the weekend and showed no signs of slowing down.

The entertainment-industry newspaper said "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" would be the ninth movie to ever gross more than $1 billion. "Deathly Hallows: Part 1" grossed $659 million last year, and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" has led the franchise until now with a gross take of $974.8 million in 2001-2002.

"Avatar" is the only film to crack the $2 billion

Jolie wows Sarajevo Film Festival

The Bulgarian movie "Ave" won the special jury award and Angelina Jolie was given a lot of applause at the Sarajevo (Bosnia) Film Festival this weekend.

Jolie and husband Brad Pitt made a surprise appearance in Sarajevo where Jolie received an Honorary Heart of Sarajevo for her humanitarian work.

Us Magazine said Sunday the long round of applause when Jolie walked on stage nearly moved the American star to tears.

Jolie directed "The Land of Blood and Honey," the love story of a Christian-Muslim couple during the bloody Bosnian war.

Bulgaria was well represented in the awards categories. Along with director Konstantin Bojanov's "Ave," Bulgarian films received awards for best film for "Breathing."

The acting awards went to Austrian Thomas Schubert and Ada Condeescu of Romania, the Sofia News Agency reported.

Workers asking for more time off

Since the recession, U.S. workers focused on keeping their jobs, but this summer there is a shift toward family, a survey indicates.

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Corporation on behalf of Adecco Staffing US, a workforce solutions provider, indicates the desire for time and work flexibility this summer cuts across gender lines.

Fifty-nine percent of women are choosing "extra vacation days" as one of the three workplace benefits they'd most want, while 47 percent of men say the same. Sixty percent of men show a greater interest in having the ability to leave work early.

"In the last few years, American workers have had more of a focus on keeping their jobs and perhaps less on other elements, including taking vacation and time off from work to spend with family and friends during the summer months," Joyce Russell, president and EVP of Adecco Staffing US, says in a statement.

"This summer we're seeing a bit of a shift from this way of thinking with survey respondents showing that maintaining one's personal life and a more relaxed work environment is valuable to them."

In addition to time flexibility, 42 percent of U.S. workers also want the option for casual workplace attire this summer, although 80 percent of women say mini-skirts are inappropriate at work compared to 61 percent of men, the survey says.

No survey details were provided.

Crystal Sugar workers reject contract

American Crystal Sugar said Sunday it would proceed with a lockout after union workers at five plants rejected the Minnesota-based cooperative's contract offer.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported the rejection by the 1,300 employees at five plants in the Red River Valley Saturday was overwhelming.

The farmer-owned cooperative is the largest beet sugar producer in the United States.

American Crystal Vice President Brian Ingulsrud said the employee lockout would begin at midnight Sunday. The company has said it would bring in replacement workers, the Star Tribune said.

The contract offer that was turned down by members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 167A would have provided workers with a 13 percent pay hike over five years plus a $2,000 signing bonus.

Union President John Riskey said in a statement 96 percent of the union members voted against it.

Pay, he said, is not the key issue.

"The company's offer still has major loopholes allowing non-union contractors to replace union workers and makes health insurance unaffordable," he said. "Any raise is meaningless if our healthcare costs increase even more or if management can eliminate our jobs and replace us at will."

Ingulsrud said American Sugar would have to meet certain criteria before it could hire non-union workers and could not lay off union employees if it did.

The company said health costs would go up an average of about $1,000 per employee, which is significantly less than their pay increase.

U.S. budget-debt votes set with 1 day left

Congressional leaders said they hoped to pass a compromise bill by Monday night to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and cut spending $2.4 trillion, averting default.

The bill, worked out largely between Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, provides for an initial $917 billion in spending cuts over 10 years followed by another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in cuts that a special joint congressional committee would be charged with finding through a tax overhaul and changes to safety-net programs, the congressional leaders and White House said.

No one speaking Sunday night said they liked the bill -- in fact, virtually every politician said they would have preferred something different -- but the compromise "will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of America," President Barack Obama said.

U.S. Treasury officials have said the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling had to be raised by Tuesday or the government could run short of money to pay its bills, including payments to veterans, contractors and Social Security recipients.

"Is this the deal I would have preferred?" Obama said Sunday on national TV. "No."

But the deal also ensures "we will not face this same kind of crisis again in six months or eight months or 12 months," Obama said. "And it will begin to lift the cloud of debt and the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over our economy."

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told House Republicans in a conference call Sunday night: "If I wrote this myself, it would look different. But I wouldn't agree to it or put it on the floor if it violated our principles or would hurt the economy," Republicans who participated in the call told The Washington Post.

Boehner hailed "the courage of all of you for helping us take this giant step forward," the participants told the Post.

"It shows how much we've changed the terms of the debate in this town," The Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying.

In pressing Tea Party conservatives to support the compromise, he said voting against it would lead to a "job-killing default" that would further hurt the bleak employment picture, The New York Times reported.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats might be reluctant to rally behind the bill.

"I look forward to reviewing the legislation with my caucus to see what level of support we can provide," she said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he knew "this agreement won't make every Republican happy -- it certainly won't make every Democrat happy either."

But "the American people demanded compromise, and today they got it," he said, adding he was "relieved" leaders from both parties reached a compromise that ended "this dangerous standoff."

McConnell, R-Ky., said the measure provided a framework to "ensure significant cuts [are made] in Washington spending -- and we can assure the American people tonight that the United States of America will not for the first time in our history default on its obligations."

Asian stock markets responded favorably to the deal, with the Nikkei 225 stock index up nearly 2 percent in late-afternoon trading and the U.S. dollar rising against the Japanese yen and the euro.

McConnell and Reid said they planned for a Senate vote as soon as Monday afternoon. If the measure passes as expected, it would move to the House, which could vote as soon as Monday night, Boehner told GOP lawmakers in the conference call.

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Depression afflicts veterinary students

Students of veterinary medicine are more likely than human medicine students or undergraduate students to struggle with depression, U.S. researchers say.

Mac Hafen, a therapist and clinical instructor at Kansas State's College of Veterinary Medicine, and colleagues at Kansas State University, the University of Nebraska and East Carolina University, say they took a closer look at depression and anxiety among veterinary medical students.

Although the mental health of human medicine students has been extensively studied, the same extent of study had not been performed with veterinary medicine students, Hafen says.

"We are hoping to predict what contributes to depression levels so that we can intervene and make things run a little bit more smoothly for students themselves," Hafen says in a statement.

Once a semester, the researchers anonymously surveyed veterinary medicine students in various stages of academic study.

During the first year of veterinary school, 32 percent of the veterinary medicine students surveyed showed symptoms of depression, compared to 23 percent of human medicine students who showed symptoms above the clinical cutoff, as evidenced by other studies.

Veterinary students experience higher depression rates as early as the first semester of their first year of study, but the depression rates appear to increase even more during the second and third year of school. However, during the fourth year, depression rates drop down to first-year levels, Hafen says.

The findings are published in the Journal of Veterinary Medicine Education.

Motorcycle helmets may be hard on hearing

Motorcycle helmets may protect bikers' brains but they also may contribute to hearing loss, researchers in Britain say.

Researchers at the University of Bath and Bath Spa University in England say the distinctive roar of a Harley's engine is loud, but studies have revealed the biggest source of noise for motorcyclists is actually generated by air whooshing over the riders' helmets. Even at legal speeds, the sound can exceed safe levels, the researchers say.

The researchers placed motorcycles helmets atop mannequin heads, mounted them in a wind tunnel and turned on the fans. By placing microphones at various locations around the helmet and at the mannequin's ear, the researchers found that an area underneath the helmet and near the chin bar is a significant source of the noise that reaches riders' sensitive eardrums.

The team also investigated how helmet angle and wind speed affected the loudness.

The study, Aeroacoustic Sources of Motorcycle Helmet Noise, is accepted for publication in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.