Unicef

The funeral service for Veno Leigertwood, 31, who was fatally shot Saturday morning outside his Yeadon home, will be held at 10 a.m. today at Sharon Baptist Church, 3955 Conshohocken Ave., in Philadelphia. Friends may visit at 8:30 a.m. Burial will follow in Rolling Green Cemetery, West Chester. Mr. Leigertwood, a 2001 graduate of Pennsylvania State University, was packing a computer into his car, which was parked in his driveway, when he was shot, execution-style, about 6:30 a.m. He was on his way to his last class at Eastern College in Radnor before earning a master's of business administration in December.

Youssou N'Dour may be a serious spiritual and socio-conscious lyricist whose new Rokku Mi Rokka examines the honest, gentle characters who make up his world. He's the Senegalese composer whose role as a modern griot mixes the traditional music of his nation - mbalax - with pop, hip-hop, samba and electronic sound. He's a bringer of peace not only with conceptual albums like Egypt, essaying the joyful essence of Islam, but through his role as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He is so serious, but what makes him giggle?

Celebrity has its perks. You can jet anywhere, stay in the finest hotels, eat the most delicious food. Everybody knows you - so much so that simply catching a glimpse can make a tired working stiff's day. Just ask the crowd that packed the Inquirer building's lobby Thursday when rock star Bono visited Philadelphia to collect the Liberty Medal. It's popularity. It's curiosity. It's celebrity. It's power. Bono has power. He - and other celebrities of substance - use it to help push humanitarian crises from the periphery of American public interest toward the center.

Veteran 76ers center Samuel Dalembert left for Haiti on Sept. 15 with a stress fracture in his left foot. He returned on Sunday with a broken heart. Dalembert visited Haiti with UNICEF, a partner with the NBA Cares program, and received a firsthand look at the poverty in his native country. Even though he lived in Haiti until he was 13, Dalembert hadn't visited for eight years. And what he saw saddened him. "The people are so poor there," Dalembert said. "There are not activities for the children, and if they have nothing to do, that is when they get in trouble.

George Michael came not to bury marijuana but to praise it. The perpetually troubled pop star highlighted a taping session for a TV interview by smoking a joint, the British television network ITV reported. Antidrug campaigners were not amused. "Stupid and naive" was the way one of them characterized Michael's toke break. The tabloid-trotting singer lit up while being interviewed for The South Bank Show, a program dedicated to the arts, ITV said. The interview is scheduled for an Oct. 31 broadcast in the U.K. "This stuff keeps me sane and happy," Michael, 43, said in the interview.

WHILE ENDING poverty, hunger and disease may still be a few days off, we did learn something exceedingly important at Live 8. Angelina Jolie is not pregnant. "I am not pregnant," she told journalists at the Eden Project in Cornwall. But can we believe her? It's not like she's been a fountain of truth over the last few months. According to Britain's News of the World, Angelina, and son Maddox, showed up at the Cornwall Live 8 concert, while her is-he-or-isn't-he boyfriend, lying no-goodnik Brad Pitt, was helping Africa in London's Hyde Park.

The Rockets' Tracy McGrady, the Lakers' Kobe Bryant, the Pacers' Jermaine O'Neal and four other NBA players have promised to donate $1,000 for every point they score in a game later this week to help victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami. The Rockets' Bob Sura, the Raptors' Jalen Rose and the Grizzlies' Pau Gasol and Mike Miller also are taking part in the $1,000-per-point donations, which will be made to UNICEF. "I first talked about it with Jermaine and Tracy right before New Year's.

is a member of The Inquirer Editorial Board My "All Join Hands" columns have taken two tracks. One is to improve the protection of children in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties from violence, be it from a finger on a trigger or the hand of an adult. The second runs through the African nation of Uganda. Thousands of children in the north there have been abducted and forced into being soldiers or slaves in a civil war. You've heard of UNICEF, the United Nations' agency for children.

After her mother married for the second time, Aline Kabila felt her life would be better. But in this war-ravaged nation, where poverty and superstitions are plentiful, her stepfamily saw her as a curse: another mouth to feed, another body to clothe. So members of her stepfamily branded the 11-year-old girl a witch. They starved her. They beat her. And when the girl's half-brother fell deathly ill, they said she had cast a spell on him. That's when they decided to purify her of the demons they thought were inside her. Her step-uncle poured acid over her head, face and right arm, almost killing her. Across Congo, thousands of girls and boys, some as young as 4, are accused by their families of practicing witchcraft.

It's easy to forget the United Nations does more than joust over Security Council resolutions about weapons inspections and going to war. The United Nations' system includes 15 agencies grappling with life-and-death issues that know no borders. One of those is eradicating polio, and one of the organizations is UNICEF. UNICEF reported last week the start of a campaign to vaccinate 60 million children under age 5 in 16 West African nations. It is part of a global effort to vanquish polio, a disease many Americans thought already had been beaten.