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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In an urban area of Philadelphia, a company called Greensgrow is selling produce grown onsite to local city-dwelling consumers, leading the way for businesses that want to be self-supporting while also stimulating the local economy and revitalizing surrounding areas. An article in today’s New York Times says,

The farm, in the low-income Kensington section, about three miles from the skyscrapers of downtown Philadelphia, also makes its own honey - marketed as “Honey From the Hood” - from a colony of bees that produce about 80 pounds a year. And it makes biodiesel for its vehicles from the waste oil produced by the restaurants that buy its vegetables.

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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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Director Jonathan Demme was recently interviewed at BFI Southbank about his Jimmy Carter documentary Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains. The film follows Carter on his recent controversial book tour for Palestine ­Peace Not Apartheid in an effort to explore the public and private sides of a man who has devoted his life to peace . During the interview Demme talks about the film and his influences:

DT: And how much did you really know about his personality before you got involved? What were the things that you discovered?

JD: There’s a profile of Carter in the New Yorker by Hendrick Hertzberg, who writes wonderful political stuff, especially for the New Yorker. He had been a Carter speechwriter and sometime in the early 90s he wrote this incredibly loving profile of Carter. And I was excited because there is this combination of this presidential-sized ego, convinced you’re right, macho, in the sense of striding the world, contrasted with this weepy, big-hearted guy who will burst into tears at the drop of a hat. So that sounded like a nice, complicated character and certainly a more complicated character than we knew of on the basis of what we saw from the media during his presidency and since. [Guardian Unlimited]

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