On Wednesday, just days after celebrating the holidays in Namibia, Africa, the couple made an impromptu stop at the St. John’s Jane Pitt Pediatric Cancer Center in Springfield, Mo., the town where Pitt grew up.

“They called a little bit ahead, about an hour ahead, and requested to tour the pediatric center,” hospital spokesperson Cora Scott said Thursday. “They stayed about 45 minutes. It was a very nice visit.”

Last year, Pitt and Jolie, along with Pitt’s brother and sister and their families, donated $1 million to St. John’s Foundation for Community Health and dedicated the pediatric cancer center to Pitt’s mother, Jane.

“Jane Pitt is a gem in our community,” Scott said. “She’s a very wonderful woman who cares so very much about the well being of children.”

Read more.

The Jolie-Pitt Foundation today announced a donation of $150,000 to SOS Children’s Villages – USA. The donation is given in recognition of National Adoption Day, which celebrates adoptive families and highlights the needs of the over 100,000 children still waiting for adoptive families in the United States. SOS Children’s Villages play a vital role in the healing and stabilization of foster care children, and constitute a critical step along the way to family reunification or adoption for many children. SOS Children’s Villages provides loving, stable homes to children around the world whose biological families cannot properly care for them. Founded over 60 years ago, SOS operates over 500 Villages in 130 countries including Illinois and Florida in the US. The Jolie-Pitt Foundation donation will provide the supplemental long-term financial support needed for a family of four foster children in an SOS Village in the US.

Read more.

Angelina Jolie is in Pakistan, where she has met with the Prime Minister in her role as UNHCR ambassador. On Wednesday she spoke with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta via satellite about the flood victims and how she deals with the tragedy she sees.

“I’ll talk to my family,” she said. “I talk to Brad; he wants to know as much as he can about these issues and every trip. He’s been here as well, he came with me after the earthquake. But I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of friends I talk to. He is really the only person I talk to.”

Read more.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Waiting in a parked car in the Ninth Ward as the rain pounds down, I cannot help but think about the flood in the movie, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

It’s a natural, because I am only a stone’s throw from where the levee broke, and I am here to meet the star of that movie, Brad Pitt, as the finale to our “Building Up America” tour.

The actor targeted this area some years ago with his Make It Right Foundation — an ambitious plan to build up the shattered neighborhood with new, ecologically friendly, affordable houses, and then fill them with residents who had been driven out by Katrina.

When the rain backs off a bit, I hustle into one of the raised houses, where my TV crew is busy setting up lights on a covered upper deck. NBC is also there, but in a different area. I spend a few minutes chatting with Brian Williams. We’ve known each other for years and share a lot of friends, and it’s always nice catching up.

Read more.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Thank you Gabriella.

This Sunday: A special edition of “Meet the Press” live from New Orleans. Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated this historical city and the surrounding region, we take an in-depth look at where things now stand. What progress has been made in rebuilding communities, schools, and businesses? Why was the recovery so long and painful? What lessons did we learn from the government’s botched response? And did those lessons help in dealing with the Oil Spill disaster this summer? Guest moderator Brian Williams speaks with two of the area’s notable political leaders: Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Next, we’ll have an exclusive interview with actor Brad Pitt, Founder of the Make It Right Foundation – an organization that aims to build 150 green, affordable, high-quality design homes in the neighborhood closest to the levee breach, the Lower 9th Ward.

Read more. Thanks Gabriella & Dulci.

So that is this sunday, August 29th on the NBC Network in the AM.

The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina brought out the best in American volunteerism. Actor Brad Pitt, who has a home in New Orleans, responded with extraordinary creativity and commitment. The Lower 9th Ward houses of Pitt’s nonprofit Make it Right Foundation – individualistic and energy-efficient – are among the most inspired responses to the storm’s ravages. As the fifth anniversary of Katrina approached, Pitt spoke with historian Douglas Brinkley, his longtime friend, about his love of the city and his dreams for its future. Brinkley provided this exclusive interview to The Times-Picayune.

Whenever actor Brad Pitt is in New Orleans, he gets on his old thrift-store bicycle and tools around the city enjoying the architecture and ambiance. It’s his way of staying in shape. His favorite destination is pedaling across the retractable North Claiborne Avenue Bridge to the Lower 9th Ward to inspect his Make It Right Foundation houses.

Read more.

You can catch the replay of this documentary that played tuesday on HBO. Thank you Kat and Norma.

Thank you Gabriella.

Is anyone in the USA able to record this for the website? Please contact me asap, even if just on a disc, I can work with it, thank you.

This year’s best sustainable buildings include an elementary school, two universities and a New Orleans home designed for Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation, according to the American Institute of Architects.

Each year, the AIA picks 10 buildings that show how design can reduce environmental impacts by reusing materials, connecting to public transit, conserving water and energy and improving indoor air quality.

The “Special No. 9 House,” shown above, was designed to provide storm-resistant, affordable and sustainable housing for New Orleans residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The 1,520 square foot, single-family home is poised for mass production as part of Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation.

Read more.

Add Brad Pitt to the list of celebrities grounded from appearances due to the volcano.

The actor was scheduled to appear this evening in New York at a tribute dinner, sponsored by the government of Tanzania, in honor of his brother Doug Pitt’s humanitarian work.

But Brad Pitt was traveling from Europe – or trying to. His plane has been grounded, like thousands of others, thanks to the power of the volcano beneath Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier.

Doug Pitt, a professional photojournalist, is a director of Africa 6000 International, which has been active in supplying fresh water to those in need, according to its web site.

Read more.