Wendy Schmidt, an environmental activist and the wife of Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, will put up $1.4-million in prize money for a contest to find new ways to clean up big oil spills, MSNBC and Fast Company report.

The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge will be run by the X Prize Foundation, which offers large cash awards for new solutions to thorny technological problems. Ms. Schmidt is president of the Schmidt Family Foundation and co-founded the Schmidt Marine Science Research Institute with her husband.

The yearlong competition carries a $1-million first prize for the project that most quickly and efficiently recovers oil on the seawater surface.

Bank of America on Thursday committed $10-million in grants to nonprofit lenders to help small businesses, The Wall Street Journal says.

The banking giant will channel the money to organizations such as Community Development Financial Institutions, which have seen their lending shrink as the recession restrained their support from federal agencies.

The Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke expressed concern earlier this month that major financial houses are not doing enough to help small businesses.

The Oscar-winning documentary maker Michael Moore is outlining plans to preserve the ornate single-screen movie houses that once anchored American downtowns by re-creating them as largely volunteer-staffed nonprofit ventures, says the Associated Press.

Mr. Moore said he would provide grants and training to cinemas that opt for such conversions from a $1-million fund he is creating with a state tax credit earned from producing his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, in Michigan.

The plan is modeled on the resurrection of the State Theatre, in Traverse City, Mich., where Mr. Moore lives and hosts an annual film festival.

With financial support from a gay-rights organization, a Berkeley, Calif., seminary is gathering Episcopal priests to compose a liturgical rite for same-sex couples, The Bay Citizen writes.

The Church Divinity School of the Pacific received a $400,000 grant last month from Michigan's Arcus Foundation to coordinate the project. The effort is supported by the Episcopal Church, which at its 2009 convention approved the development of “theological and liturgical resources” to confer blessings of same-sex relationships.

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The Academy Award-winning actress and part-time New Orleans resident Sandra Bullock wants her appearance excised from a video promoting long-term cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico following reports that the group sponsoring the clip received money from a nonprofit group linked to the oil industry, writes The Times-Picayune.

The video, in which Ms. Bullock and other celebrities call for a federal plan to restore the Gulf, is part of a campaign by the advocacy group Women of the Storm. The organization’s president, Anne Milling, is married to the chairman of America’s Wetland Foundation, which has received financial support from BP and other oil companies.

Ms. Milling said that while the foundation is listed online as a sponsor of her group’s Restore the Gulf campaign and has provided logistical support, the group has not given Women of the Storm any money, as was reported by the...

The strapped Washington National Opera is mulling a merger with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

Citing a source familiar with the matter, the Journal says the Kennedy Center would assume the opera’s assets and liabilities and exercise authority on artistic and budget matters. The opera's president, Kenneth R. Feinberg, told the Post the merger talk is “mere speculation” but added that “all options are on the table.”

The opera, which is headed by the star tenor Placido Domingo and holds its performances at the Kennedy Center, has debts totaling $11-million and has cut its upcoming season to five productions.

In other arts news, a Chinese performance group in the United States is claiming pressure from China’s government is behind its failure to secure Los Angeles officials’ permission to build a downtown ...

Virginia’s attorney general says he plans to give away campaign donations he received from a charity director who is under investigation in Virginia and at least three other states, says The Washington Post.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II announced Wednesday that he will donate $55,000 given to his campaign by Bobby Thompson, a Florida man who founded the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, to veterans’ charities in Virginia.

The campaign gifts had become a sticky political issue for Mr. Cuccinelli. The U.S. Navy Veterans Association has come under fire for its controversial fund-raising practices, and law-enforcement officials have complained that they cannot locate many of the officers and employees the charity names in its official documents.

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Connecticut’s attorney general has begun a probe into two charities operated by a man who is leading a high-profile effort to help a Yale hockey player who has leukemia, says The New York Times.

Richard Blumenthal, the state’s attorney general, said Tedd Collins IV, founder of the health charities Become My Hero and Natasha’s Place, had failed to notify Mr. Blumenthal’s office of his efforts to raise funds in the state, which is mandatory in Connecticut. Mr. Collins is also being investigated for fraud in Kentucky, where he lived recently.

Mr. Collins acknowledged to The Times that he had not legally registered his organizations in Connecticut but declined to answer questions about his fund raising.

The charity founder has spearheaded efforts to find a stem-cell donor match for an ailing Yale student, Mandi Schwartz. Yale University had been directing Ms. Schwartz’s supporters to Mr....

As credit extended to small businesses by conventional banks remains tight in the wake of the global financial crisis, nonprofit microlenders are seeing a jump in demand for their services among Americans, writes The New York Times.

Microfinance, which involves lending small sums to beginning entrepreneurs, has gained popularity as a means to nurture the economic health of developing countries. Kiva.org, an international microlender, has recently started a pilot program to lend to business owners in the United States, while the Grameen Bank, the microlending pioneer with headquarters in Bangladesh, has also broadened its scope to include U.S. work.

The movement has gotten some fuel from last year’s economic-stimulus bill, which included $54-million granted to the Small Business Administration earmarked for microlenders. In 2010 loan applications at the nation’s 362 microfinance lenders...

The progress made in treating HIV-positive people in the developing world is being threatened, say AIDS activists, by insufficient funds to sustain that treatment for all who need it, according to The Washington Post.

Participants at this month’s international AIDS conference, in Vienna, say that the Obama administration is backpedaling on promises to increase annual giving for global AIDS treatment efforts, programs his predecessor, George W. Bush, supported robustly.

About 33.4 million people are said to be infected with HIV worldwide; the United Nations agency UNAIDS says an estimated $23.6-billion is needed to fight the disease in developing countries this year, but only $15.9-billion -- 27 percent of it from the American government -- is currently available. Financial support for international AIDS programs stayed flat in 2008 and ’09, and the Obama administration has requested on...