Leaders of the Screen Actors Guild voted to declare its opposition to the planned closure of an historic motion picture home where many well-known actors have spent their last days.
SAG’s national board voted by a 3.5-percent margin on Saturday to oppose the closure of the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s long-term care facility and hospital in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills neighborhood.
SAG has no role in administering the home — that’s the fund’s job — and no official say in its future but many of its members financially support the home through fund contributions. The vote from the divided 69-member board, plus two officers, served to highlight the controversy swirling around the issue.
Actors such as Mary Astor, Norma Shearer, “Gone With the Wind” Oscar-winner Hattie McDaniel and “Tarzan” star Johnny Weismuller once lived at the home, which opened in 1948.
The fund announced in January that it planned to close the home this year to save on overhead costs because the facility was running a $10-million deficit that could eventually bankrupt the fund. Payments from the state’s Medi-Cal program weren’t keeping pace with expenses, the fund said.
That outraged some actors who felt it would destroy a legacy. Critics also include some of the 300 hospital workers who would lose their jobs and relatives of those staying at the home — who argue that fragile patients might not survive being moved to other facilities.
About 200 people picketed the fund’s headquarters earlier this year, and opponents created a group called “Saving the Lives of Our Own” that vigorously challenges the fund’s contention that it can’t afford to maintain the facility.
The SAG board vote followed presentations by both the motion picture fund and opponents of closing the home.
“Our board voted to oppose the closing and did so to try and preserve the legacy of the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s Long Term Care historic commitment, in honor of the screen actors who founded it,” SAG National President Alan Rosenberg said in a statement.
The vote was disappointing, the fund said in a Sunday statement.
The long-term facility is losing nearly $1 million a month and if the fund doesn’t transfer its 84 residents to other nursing homes, “the fund will go bankrupt within five years,” said Frank Mancuso, the board’s chairman and the former chairman of Paramount Pictures and MGM.
“We cannot and will not compromise the best interests of SAG’s membership and the rest of the 60,000 people we serve every year by keeping it open,” he said in the statement.
The closures won’t affect the 185 residents of independent- and assisted-living facilities and the fund’s six area health centers that serve 60,000 industry workers.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More