MNN - Mother Nature Network

 

The 9th annual Lupus L.A. Hollywood Bag Ladies luncheon drew hundreds of fashionable women with cash to bid on designer and celebrity-donated handbags from the likes of Sharon Stone, Katy Perry, Gwyneth Paltrow and Courteney Cox, all of it going to Lupus L.A.'s efforts to raise awareness and funds for lupus research. The event brought in $246,000 for the cause from ticket sales, handbag bids and a prize package auction.

 

Invited by her friend Dennis, whose late mother had lupus, model and actress Joanna Krupa also wanted to support the cause in honor of another friend and neighbor living with the autoimmune disease. "It's my first time and I'm excited to be here," said the fan of Chanel and Louis Vuitton purses. "I got a vintage Chanel recently. They're so classic, you can have them for years and years," she noted. Currently hosting "Poland's Next Top Model" ("I'm the Polish Tyra Banks," she laughed), Krupa is a devoted animal activist who currently has six rescue dogs, including King Charles spaniels, a German shepherd mix, a Yorkie mix and a Chihuahua mix, two of which are fosters that she kept.

 

When it comes to being green, "I try not to purchase bottled water," she added. "I have a filter at home."

 

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NBC/Universal kicks off its fifth annual Green Week Nov. 13 during NBC's "Football Night in America" with more than 100 hours of programming and content on air and online, all with an eco-themed message. USA's "Burn Notice," Bravo's "Fashion Hunters" and NBC's "Community" will incorporate green elements, the latter involving a commercial Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) creates for Greendale Community College. The Weather Channel will premiere a town hall event entitled "Changing Planet: Adapting to Our Water Future," moderated by Anne Thompson, and will feature new environmental segments all week. CNBC's series will focus on green business and investments, Golf Channel will include environmental trends and leaders and green tips for golfers, and G4 will recommend eco-friendly games and offer electronics recycling suggestions. "Access Hollywood" and "Access Hollywood Live" will offer green celebrity and lifestyle segments, and green reports and tips will be showcased in Telemundo and Mun2 programming.

 

Online, a wide variety of green content will be available at iVillage.com and DailyCandy.com. Stars including Padma Lakshmi, Brian Williams and Nick Offerman will appear in green-themed PSA spots for the network's "The More You Know" campaign. And in conjunction with the new Mugs Save Trees initiative, Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott will appear in promotional spots on Oxygen all week and "E! News" will spotlight the Green is Universal coffee mugs on air. The idea is to get consumers to switch from paper and Styrofoam to reusable containers. Doing so could save 9 million trees each year, not to mention saving 5.7 billion gallons of water — enough energy to light 77,000 homes, and save 363 million pounds of waste.

 

From Nov. 14-18, Universal will send coffee carts into the streets of New York and team up with coffee shops in Los Angeles and Chicago to hand out free coffee in reusable mugs made from biodegradable corn plastic in plantable seed paper sleeves each morning to the first 100 customers (when the allotment of mugs is gone, people who bring their own will get free coffee and the sleeve). Consumers can also enter a Facebook contest, uploading photos of themselves with their reusable cups for a chance to win a porcelain Green is Universal mug signed by NBC/Universal talent, or the grand prize: a trip for four to Universal Studios Hollywood, with front-of-the-line passes.

 

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The top 11 contestants from Season 10 of "American Idol" have joined together for an environmental cause, filming a PSA for the Plastic Pollution Coalition and its REFUSE disposable plastic campaign.

 

Haley Reinhart introduces the video here: http://wishes.causes.com/wishes/397803, explaining how those who contribute toward the goal of raising $50,000 will be entered to win a new Gibson guitar signed by the top 11 contestants and other prizes.

 

 

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For the PBS "Nature" documentary "Jungle Eagle," premiering Nov. 9, filmmaker Fergus Beeley trekked to the Venezuelan rain forest in search of the elusive harpy eagle, following a family of the predatory birds for a year as they hunted prey: howler and capuchin monkeys. "There are other eagles that are just as big, but none are as powerful," Beeley says, pointing out the species' deadly rear talon. "The biggest challenge was overcoming the fact that the visibility is at best 10 meters through much of the rain forest, and getting up 40 meters" in altitude. "You've got issues with health and safety and worrying about these things that will attack you. There's no messing with these birds. They're certainly not frightened of people. We didn't want to get into the nest for any more than we had to. I don't know why on Earth I undertook this film," he says now. "The horrors that we encountered throughout the entire filmmaking process, I would never go through again."

 

According to Dr. Mike Wallace, a raptor specialist from the San Diego Zoo who is renowned for helping to save the California condor from extinction, says that although there are thousands of harpy eagles in the Venezuelan rain forest, "they are endangered in certain areas where logging is occurring or development is occurring there and in other countries. As you go up the range towards Mexico, you find fewer and fewer animals until they're virtually extinct in Mexico, and there's less and less in Central America." Organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and Peregrine Fund are working to protect the harpy eagle's habitats.

 

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Tune in: NatGeo Wild will present "Penguin Palooza" on Nov. 12 and 13, showcasing polar bears, walruses and, of course, penguins in a marathon of programming about cold-weather creatures. It will include the broadcast premiere of "Arctic Tale," narrated by Queen Latifah, and the Oscar-winning documentary "March of the Penguins," narrated by Morgan Freeman.

 

ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" honors veterans and military families on Nov. 11 in a special broadcast hosted by Jewel and featuring Whoopi Goldberg, George Lopez, Robin Williams, J.R. Martinez and other celebs who'll encourage viewers to donate to veteran-serving charities via www.riseandhonor.org.

 

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