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At UN, Naomi Campbell Headlines $450 a Ticket Fundraiser for Invisible Environmental Group

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Muse

UNITED NATIONS, May 2 -- Friday the buzz at UN Headquarters was a $450 a ticket fundraiser ostensibly about climate change. The invitation promised the attendance of Naomi Campbell, who was sighted in the building last week outside the Security Council chamber, and of Leonardo DiCaprio. While the listed sponsor and beneficiary of the fundraiser, the International Renewable Energy Organization, sounds like a good idea, it is worth noting that a search of the Lexis-Nexis database for this name on Friday found not a single article or hit. Nor did a search of Google News.  Never a good sign, its Administrative Board is "under construction" -- click here to view.

Yet the invitation and solicitation of the $450 donation was being sent around by, among others, the World Food Program. The invitation listed as "in attendance but not confirmed" Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Naomi Campbell, flying cell phones and IREO not shown

If Bloomberg does in fact come, he can see plywood construction in the UN's lobby, a belated attempt to bring the building up to fire code, before it is all gutted in 2009.

            On that, the UN Spokesperson's Office answered Inner City Press' question about how much its festivities on May 5 to celebrate the groundbreaking on the UN's North Lawn for a temporary conference building will cost:

"The costs will be between $30,000 and $50,000, depending on the weather. The costs are covered by the CMP, which had included costs for a groundbreaking event in its budget."

            But not included in the Capital Master Plan budget, at least as presented to the General Assembly, are the costs of a UN broadcasting facility. That will be slipped in as a budget add-on. And so it goes at the UN.

Footnote: more than one UN correspondent wondered why the UN would celebrate a model known to throw cell phones and abuse domestic workers, on the same day the UN Security Council dropped any reference Nobel Prize winning Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi from its statement on Myanmar.  The question was, is Naomi Campbell a threat to international peace and security, to get on the Council's agenda?

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These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

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