UPI NewsTrack Entertainment News

SAG, AMPTP reps meet with mediator

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Representatives for the Screen Actors Guild and a group of Hollywood TV and film producers met with a federal mediator Thursday to discuss a new contract.

SAG and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers negotiating committees had previously met for 44 days of formal negotiations, but didn't reach a successor agreement to the TV/theatrical pact that expired June 30. AMPTP has repeatedly said a package it presented that day was its final offer and the two parties had not met since then, apart from one sidebar session during the summer.

SAG, which has been holding out for a better deal, last month asked that a federal mediator be used to help jump-start contract talks.

Both sides subsequently met with the mediator separately.

Variety.com said Thursday's joint meeting does not appear to have yielded any obvious results and neither SAG nor AMPTP offered an immediate comment.

Sources familiar with the sit-down told the entertainment industry trade newspaper all that really happened at the meeting was each side repeated its argument.

The federal mediator reportedly stated at the beginning of the session that its content would be confidential.

Penn: Milk would've helped in AIDS crisis

NEW YORK, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. actor Sean Penn says he thinks gay activist Harvey Milk would have saved lives by drawing attention to the AIDS epidemic had he not been slain in 1978.

Penn, who plays the late San Francisco city supervisor in the new movie "Milk," told reporters in New York this week that he thinks the real-life Milk would have campaigned to get former U.S. President Ronald Reagan to do more to prevent the spread of AIDS and help those suffering from the disease when the number of AIDS cases were on the rise in the 1980s.

"I think less people would've died of AIDS. I think Ronald Reagan would've been forced to address it and it was a tragic loss," Penn replied when asked how he thinks the world might have been a different place if Milk hadn't been shot and killed three decades ago by former fellow city supervisor Dan White, who tried unsuccessfully to get his job back after he resigned his post.

"(Milk) wouldn't have stood quietly. He was a leader and he happened to be focused on the gay movement," Penn continued. "And because the impression was that (AIDS) was initially -- popularly the notion was that this was a gay disease and certainly huge numbers of homosexuals died related to it and all that -- I think he would've advanced that argument a lot sooner. I think people are dead because he died too soon."

Court grants Madonna and Ritchie divorce

LONDON, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. pop music icon Madonna and her British filmmaker husband Guy Ritchie were granted a divorce in London's High Court Friday.

The couple, who married in 2000 and have two children together, last month announced plans to legally end their marriage.

The BBC quoted a statement released by the court as saying the recording artist petitioned for divorce on the grounds that Ritchie's behavior was unreasonable.

Neither party was in court Friday when the decree was granted, the British broadcaster said.

The Times of London reported Thursday the settlement the former couple reached allows Madonna to retain most of her estimated $440 million wealth. The pact also states her sons with Ritchie -- Rocco, 8, and David, 3 -- will split their time between family homes in the United States and England. Lourdes, Madonna's 12-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, will continue to live with her mother in the United States, the newspaper said.

Simpson and Wentz name new son Bronx

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. singer Ashlee Simpson-Wentz has given birth to a baby boy named Bronx Mowgli Wentz, People.com reported.

The child, who was born Thursday night, is the first for Simpson-Wentz and her husband Pete Wentz, the bassist for the pop-punk group Fall Out Boy.

"Ashlee, Pete and baby Bronx are all healthy and happy, and thank everyone for their well wishes!" a representative for the couple told the magazine.

Simpson-Wentz is the younger sister of singer-actress Jessica Simpson.