Retail & Celebrity Charity News July 7

George Clooney is speaking out about the dispute between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, The Los Angeles Times reports. Tom Hanks is one of at least 600 actors who signed a letter supporting the contract AFTRA recently negotiated. Jack Nicholson is one of more than 60 actors who are behind SAG. The AFTRA deal increases pay for actors but SAG officials say it doesn’t meet some of their goals and are pushing 44,000 members it shares with the union with to vote against the contract by July 8. Clooney is suggesting that some stars, including the aforementioned two, conduct annual reviews of the growth in online entertainment to make sure actors get the share of revenue they deserve. To help raise money for healthcare and pension funds, Clooney suggested the guild increase dues for actors that make more, increasing the $6,000 cap to $6,000 per $1 million actors earn.

After the California Senate passed Senate Bill 1712 to ban lead in lipstick, the bill was killed by a narrow margin in the Assembly Health Committee because of heavy lobbying by the cosmetics industry. Lobbyists and executives from companies including Estee Lauder, Revlon and Johnson & Johnson headed to the capital to defeat Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) bill, which would have required companies to make lipstick with the lowest amount of lead possible. Lead has been shown to be a neurotoxin that can cause learning problems and has also been mentioned in relation to infertility and miscarriage. According to product tests by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, 39% of the lipsticks tested had no detectable lead levels.

Whole Foods Market opened its first store in Reno, Nevada, on June 25. The 52,000-square-foot store was designed to look like a rustic mountain lodge, and features an indoor/outdoor fireplace and a misted/heated patio with family-style dining and sofas.  The store has a burger bar called Sierra Grill, a bakery, a trail mix bar for custom blending and a meat selection including buffalo and quail.

 

The Education Partnership for Children of Conflict (www.EducationPartnership.org) announced that the Jolie-Pitt Foundation donated $1 million to support the education of 8,000 youth from both the United States and Iraq impacted by the recent war. The money will go to four organizations that work to educate and support children who have lost parents, homes and educational opportunities in Iraq, in addition to youth in the U.S. dealing with the long deployment, injury, or the death of a parent that served in the Armed Services. The foundation is contributing $500,000 to support the Armed Services YMCA Operation Hero Program, with the remaining $500,000 going to Women for Women International, International Rescue Committee and NineMillion.org/UNHCR.

Coca Cola will release the Full Throttle Coffee canned drink in August. The product comes in 15-ounce cans contains coffee and Full Throttle’s energy and vitamin blend. The packaging will be in English and Spanish.

Burger King has launched a new nutritionally balanced BURGER KING Kids Meal that includes fresh apple fries with low-fat caramel dipping sauce, KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese and HERSHEY’S 1% Low Fat White Milk. The addition is part of BK Positive Steps nutrition program. The meal will cost $3.49 and has 350 calories, 9% of which are from saturated fat, as well as servings from three food groups: milk, grains and fruit.

 Vornado Realty Trust plans to close the Times Square Virgin Megastore during the first quarter of 2009, Reuters reports. Vornado formed a joint venture with the Related Cos., a real estate company, to buy the 10-unit Virgin Entertainment Group North America in September 2007; Vornado owns 49% of Virgin and Related owns 51%.

ABC aired footage of Ben Affleck’s trip to Congo, Looking to the Stars reports. Reports say about 1,200 people die every day in the African nation, from illnesses such as things like preventable diseases, and more than 5 million have died over the past 10 years, largely because of internal conflict. Affleck noted: “My trip brought me to camps for people displaced from their homes, to rural hospitals, to gold mines, and even to remote operations with the United Nations designed to “sensitize” the most violent and vicious of the foreign-born militia in an effort to encourage them to return to their country of origin. I met with warlords and peacemakers, survivors and aid workers…The connected human chain which binds us demands that we contribute, even if only in some small way, to the betterment of the world. Congo is a place that deserves, at the very least, our eyes and our ears.”