After Eight Years, Comic Relief Back Saturday to Raise Money for Katrina Victims [View All]

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT/AP: Comic Relief to Raise Money for Katrina
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 14, 2006

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Comic Relief, the celebrity-studded fundraising telethon for the homeless, is back, after an 8-year hiatus.

Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg will take the stage Saturday to raise funds for Hurricane Katrina victims, capping a weeklong Comedy Festival that began Tuesday in Las Vegas....

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The show marks the ninth major telecast of Comic Relief, a 20-year-old institution that held its last major event in 1998. Participating this year are Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, George Lopez and Sarah Silverman. Wayne Brady will host the show's satellite location in New Orleans. It will be broadcast live from Caesars Palace on HBO and, with an 8-second delay for content, on TBS.

Much of the proceeds will go toward building traditional ''shotgun'' houses in New Orleans' Holy Cross area in the devastated lower Ninth Ward. The narrow, rectangular houses can be built for about $145,000 each and sold to low-income families for about $110,000 by a local nonprofit group, (Comic Relief founder and President Bob Zmuda) said.

''People have kind of forgotten. They say New Orleans is OK now. And it's not. It's ground zero,'' Zmuda said....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Comic-Relief.html