The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Katie Halper:

Brigitte Bardot Fine: Top 5 Bardotisms That Got Hot Sex Symbol In Hot Water

Obama Pound: In Historic Moment, White People Exposed To “Fist Bump” For First Time

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Nicole Hughes:

Get a Job: Top 10 Guides to Finding the Perfect Eco Career

Schwarzenegger Declares Drought in California

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Andy Kondrat:

Barcelona Fines Citizens for Using Drinking Water in Pools and Gardens

Coal Power Plants Waste Two-Thirds of Energy Input

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Jon Popham:

Megabus Expanding to the East Coast

Egyptian Blogger Freed from Prison

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Giulia Rozzi:

Diamonds In The Rough: A Ugandan Hip Hop Revolution

Cluster Bomb Ban

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Gina Telaroli:

Interview with Nina Davenport, Director of Operation Filmmaker

KidZui : Internet for Kids (and Those Young at Heart)

Megabus.com is bringing its highly affordable ground transportation operation to the East Coast of the United States. Starting Sunday the British-founded bus operation began running routes from a New York City hub serving Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Washington DC, Toronto, Atlantic City, NJ, and Buffalo, NY. Megabus is offering online bookings for free for its first week of operations, through June 5th. After that advance online bookings can be as low as $1 for certain routes, with a 50 cent booking fee.

How do they do it? Megabus.com operates under the same model as low cost European air carriers such as EasyJet and RyanAir, with the earlier the ticket booking the cheaper the fare is. Also, the fare is just the start, with additional charges being levied for various extras on the bus. However there are free services on the bus as well including video and WiFi starting June 9th.

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Sir Paul McCartney is said to be “horrified” that his spanking new hybrid car was flown 7,000 miles from Japan to the United Kingdom. The aging British rocker received the car, the $170,000 Lexus LS600H hybrid, as a gift for promotional work he had done for Lexus, but was mystified when the automobile was loaded onto a Korean Air flight and flown to Britain rather than arriving via ship as originally planned.

Transporting the car via jet created a carbon footprint nearly 100 times bigger than if the car had been sent by sea. Carbon offsetting firm CO2Balance.com estimated thatsending the enormous car on the plane created a carbon footprint of 38,050 kg as opposed to a 397 kg footprint for the three week boat journey.

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UK Residents waste $20 Billion worth of food every year, The Guardian reports. A new British Government study on waste has found that Britons are simply throwing away $20 Billion worth of food that could have been eaten. If you’ve sampled certain British cuisine, this might not come as much of a surprise, but the negative effect this enormous amount of waste has on the environment is no joke.

Approximately $12 Billion of the total comes from food that is bought but never touched. Britons simply toss out 13 million unopened yogurt containers, 5,500 untouched chickens and 440,000 un-nuked TV Dinners each year. The rest of the $20 Billion comes from excess food which is prepared to eat but never consumed because the amount was misjudged and the extra is never eaten as leftovers.

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Hedgehogs, like humans, have a thing for ice cream. But because hedgehogs lack the ability to tackle a pint of Cherry Garcia with a spoon, they can only satisfy their ice cream cravings by, say, licking the insides of discarded McFlurry cups.

Sadly, in so doing, an astonishing number of hedgehogs in Europe get their spikey little noggins stuck in the McFlurry’s lid and starve to death.

I applauded the British Hedgehog Preservation Society back in September of 2006 when they succeeded in getting McDonald’s to redesign the McFlurry lids after “untold numbers” of British hedgehogs had died in this unfortunate way.

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The 80th annual Academy Awards are on Sunday and on everyone’s minds. But instead of predicting this years winners, I wanted to write about some of the losers in Oscar’s history. OK, maybe losers is a little too strong. These 5 Best Picture nominees didn’t win the Academy Award. But by highlighting important social issues, raising awareness, and inspiring action, they won our hearts and minds. So get ready to be inspired!

1. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) starring Jimmy Stewart and directed by Frank Capra is both a scathing critique of Washington DC corruption and a heartfelt and hopeful story of an individual’s ability to make change in the face of adversity. The film was criticized by the media, politicians, congressmen, (surprise surprise!) who called it Communist and Anti-American. Another measure of the film’s power and reach is that it was banned in Fascist Italy and Spain and Nazi Germany.

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So ! You can be a Mr./Mrs./Ms. Smith and you don’t even have to go to Washington. All you have to do is e-mail Washington! Tell Congress to stick to its principles and not cave in to special interests and corruption.

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The British government’s given the green light to a new generation of nuclear power plants, the BBC reports. Business Secretary John Hutton told members of Parliament that nuclear reactors offer a “tried and tested” source of energy which “provides one of the cheapest electricity options available to reduce our carbon emissions”.

Hutton insisted that the problem of where to bury the nuclear waste doesn’t need to be solved before the new reactors are built, saying that the plants could rely on existing “interim” storage facilities until a permanent underground site is chosen.

Steve Webb, a member of the Liberal Democrat party, objected to the decision to go nuclear at a time “when other technologies like carbon capture and storage, like renewables, are evolving practically every day”.

Hutton’s response? “I’m all in favour of reducing emissions. I think we can start with what comes out of your mouth.”