U2 lead singer Bono speaks at a news conference at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, July 8, 2005. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
Bono vs Berlusconi, best feet forward for landmines, a &${esc.hash}39;sex theme park&${esc.hash}39; spat, and much more...As communications guru Max Clifford stressed at a recent charity communications conference in London, not all PR is good PR. Rock star and anti-poverty supremo Bono is a tad upset at being featured in an Italian government magazine listing its achievements ahead of next week&${esc.hash}39;s elections.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper published a letter from Bono to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in which the U2 front man said he felt &${esc.hash}39;a bit exploited&${esc.hash}39; by the use of his photo captioned: &${esc.hash}39;The Irish star is grateful to the prime minister for the actions promoted by the Italian government towards poor countries.&${esc.hash}39;
The rock star told Berlusconi he needs to flesh out exactly how Italy is going to boost its aid contributions as promised at the G8 summit last year. That&${esc.hash}39;s providing Italian voters don&${esc.hash}39;t Make Berlusconi History first...
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Another case of unwanted publicity appears in the Guardian today. Some charities, including the Terrence Higgins Trust, Relate and Avert HIV, are reportedly unhappy that their names have appeared on marketing material for the &${esc.hash}39;London Academy of Sex and Relationships&${esc.hash}39; &${esc.hash}39; a &${esc.hash}39;sex theme park&${esc.hash}39;, which is due to open in central London this year.
The academy will include exhibits and interactive zones that lift the lid on flirting, sexual chemistry, sexually transmitted diseases and common bedroom problems.
Although the theme park isn&${esc.hash}39;t meant to titillate and has refused porn industry funding, the charities say they&${esc.hash}39;ve not seen enough about the project to give it their whole-hearted endorsement. Maybe the Muse Corporation, which is funding the &${esc.hash}39;4.7 million (${esc.dollar}8.1 million) project, needs to brush up on its wooing techniques a little.
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Selling a load of old shoes on auction website ebay may not seem a great way to raise cash &${esc.hash}39; but it depends of course on who they once belonged to. Mines Advisory Group, a humanitarian organisation that works to alleviate the impact of conflict, has raised nearly &${esc.hash}39;13,200 (${esc.dollar}22,800) from a celebrity shoe auction ahead of International Landmine Awareness Day on Tuesday.
Launching the auction, former Beatle Paul McCartney&${esc.hash}39;s wife Heather Mills McCartney, who lost her left leg in a road accident in 1993, said: &${esc.hash}39;MAG&${esc.hash}39;s idea to host a shoe auction is inspired because it&${esc.hash}39;s a vivid reminder of the effects that landmines cause."
The top-selling footwear items included Paul McCartney&${esc.hash}39;s slip-ons, which raised &${esc.hash}39;2,550, Brian May&${esc.hash}39;s clogs, which fetched &${esc.hash}39;1,376.88, and Peter Noone&${esc.hash}39;s Versace boots, which went for &${esc.hash}39;1,070.
Tomorrow, the charity will create what it describes as a &${esc.hash}39;Mass of Shoes&${esc.hash}39; in Trafalgar Square, London, with 2,000 single shoes commemorating the 15,000-20,000 civilians injured or killed each year by landmines and other unexploded munitions. Celebs such as Vanessa Redgrave and Martin Bell will also be on hand to give the occasion some welly, as the Brits like to say...
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TV just isn&${esc.hash}39;t doing enough to promote a positive image of the developing world, according to a new report published today by international development charity VSO. It says that viewers have an &${esc.hash}39;overwhelmingly negative view&${esc.hash}39; of developing countries and blame television for reinforcing stereotypical images of &${esc.hash}39;starving babies with flies around their eyes&${esc.hash}39;, disaster and corruption.
This despite the high level of developing world coverage around the G8 summit last year. In fact, the report says that even the Make Poverty History campaign and the Live 8 concerts &${esc.hash}39;have inadvertently contrived to confirm a stereotype of Africa as a continent on its knees and added to a sense that nothing has changed over the last 20 years&${esc.hash}39;.
The focus groups consulted for the report said they wanted to see more positive stories about life in developing countries and progress being made. Not surprisingly, they were keen to see programmes containing human interest stories, real-life issues and &${esc.hash}39;characters they can relate to&${esc.hash}39;.
Ideas for new-style shows included Jamie&${esc.hash}39;s African School Dinners, Life Swap, African Grand Designs, Spooks or 24 in Africa and Africa&${esc.hash}39;s Next Top Model&${esc.hash}39; Reality TV gets a dose of reality &${esc.hash}39; or would it?!
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Other celebrity chit-chat&${esc.hash}39;
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Oxfam is taking British Olympic medal-winning boxer Amir Khan to visit a camp for displaced earthquakes survivors in Kashmir this week.
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The British Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague , and Shadow International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, are in Darfur today and tomorrow, where they&${esc.hash}39;ll be visiting an Oxfam refugee camp and meeting with U.N. representatives and Sudanese government ministers.
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Footballer and UNICEF goodwill ambassador David Beckham has admitted he suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), according to the Independent. In an interview to be broadcast on ITV1, he says his wife, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, calls him a &${esc.hash}39;weirdo&${esc.hash}39; because of the condition. Surely it won&${esc.hash}39;t be long before the OCD charity requests come rolling in.
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In other news, it looks as though Thailand&${esc.hash}39;s PM Thaksin Shinawatra has won Sunday&${esc.hash}39;s general election as expected. But the opposition boycotted the poll, and in 30 or so seats candidates didn&${esc.hash}39;t get above the 20 percent of votes required to become MPs. The huge protest vote means that the country&${esc.hash}39;s political crisis is likely to continue. This is good news for Muslim militants in the far south, who have been waging a campaign against the government.
Two bombs went off thereat polling stations on Sunday wounding four security personnel. But Sunai Phasuk of Human Rights Watch told AlertNet that the violence around the election had been less than feared. Speaking from the south, he said that as the election had met with so much protest, the militants likely hadn&${esc.hash}39;t seen much point in disrupting the dysfunctional polls any further.
If the PM&${esc.hash}39;s in trouble, so much the better for them, as his government has been cracking down hard on suspected insurgents.
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It&${esc.hash}39;s now almost six months since the earthquake in Kashmir that killed 73,000 people and left around 3.5 million homeless. The Pakistan government has ordered that the camps where many of the 300,000 displaced are still sheltering should be closed. According to IRIN, there are concerns that local authorities are pressuring people to return to their villages, whether or not there is anything for them to go back to.
NGOs have expressed relief that a feared second wave of death during the winter was avoided, but there are still risks to the safety of those heading back into the mountains. The Independent quotes the chief of staff from the Pakistan Federal Relief Commission as saying the worry now is rain &${esc.hash}39; which began in March and is likely to continue until July: &${esc.hash}39;It will destabilise the mountain slopes, and there will be massive landslides,&${esc.hash}39; Agha Farooq told the paper.
How returnees will earn a living is also a major issue, as farmers lost their harvests and don&${esc.hash}39;t have the money to buy seeds.
Mario Ragazzi, donor liaison for Caritas Italiana in Pakistan, warns in a press release that, despite reconstruction efforts, there is a high probability people will head down to the lower valleys to seek refuge in camps again ahead of next winter.
That&${esc.hash}39;s all for today - no belated April Fool&${esc.hash}39;s included! Megan Rowling AlertNet journalist
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