Rio's list of problems gets a little longer

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP

In one of the more irony-laced news events of the last week, Rio de Janeiro, one of the world's most violent cities, asked Naomi Campbell, one of the world's most violent supermodels, to be its ambassador.

Two days after Campbell admitted in a NYC courtroom that she threw a mobile phone at her housekeeper, the last in a long line of abuses aimed at her staff, she told Rio's mayor that she would gladly accept the offer to represent the city because it's one of the few places in the world where she "felt at home." In the meantime, federal police have been sent to the city to try to quell a wave of gang violence. Nearly 20 people died in late December when gangs torched city buses and attacked police stations. Let's hope they just throw phones at each other from now on, okay?