Bob Barker seeks to end N.C. bear pits

Asheville, N.C. — Former game show host and longtime animal rights activist Bob Barker has made a personal appeal to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina to stop exhibiting bears in pit-like enclosures at three local zoos.

The Asheville Citizen-Times reported that Barker met Tuesday with Principal Chief Michell Hicks and five members of the Tribal Council. He called the bears’ conditions inhumane and asked that they be turned over to a sanctuary in California.

“To think that with as advanced as our civilization is now that there is any place in the United States where bears are kept in pits is just unbelievable,” said Barker, who is part American Indian and grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. “Just picture yourself, if your life, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, month after month, was in a pit.”

Gretchen Wilson to start record label

Nashville, Tenn. — Gretchen Wilson plans to start her own record label, and she’d like to call it, naturally, Redneck Records.

Wilson, who became a country sensation with her 2004 down-home anthem “Redneck Woman,” said Wednesday that if things go well she’ll release a new single in September and a new album in November.

Wilson’s longtime label group, Sony Music Nashville, announced Tuesday that she and the company parted ways after three albums. Sony described the split as mutual.

Wilson, 36, says she’s grateful for her time at Sony, but after the company merged with BMG in 2004, the team of people who’d worked with her began turning over.

Lefevre ‘stunned’ at losing role in ‘Eclipse’

Los Angeles — Bryce Dallas Howard is taking over as the villainous vampire Victoria in the third “Twilight” movie, and the actress who’s played the part in the first two films says she was “stunned” and “hurt deeply” by the switch.

Rachelle Lefevre says she was unaware that Summit Entertainment, which is releasing the vampire saga, had chosen someone else to play her part in “Eclipse.” Summit announced Howard as her replacement late Tuesday, saying Lefevre had scheduling conflicts that would make her unable to participate in the production.

But Lefevre said Wednesday that she was “fully committed” to returning as Victoria. She says her involvement in the drama “Barney’s Version,” starring Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman, would only last 10 days.