NEW YORK (AP) – Russell Simmons is planning to visit Africa to tour diamond mines and factories.

Simmons sets out this month for South Africa and Botswana on a fact-finding mission as he starts the Diamond Empowerment Fund to teach Africans how to cut and polish diamonds rather than simply mining them.

“We want more of black Africans to become executives,” the 49-year-old hip-hop mogul told the Daily News in Friday’s editions. “The diamond industry should be the leader of African empowerment.”

Most African diamonds are cut by people in Belgium and Israel.

Simmons said he makes “a lot of money” working with diamond giant De Beers on his line of jewelry.

De Beers produces about 40 percent of the world’s supply of rough diamonds from its mines in South Africa, and in partnership with the governments of Botswana, Namibia and Tanzania, according to its Web site. The company, which had $6.5 billion in revenue in 2005, claims the diamond industry has a “zero tolerance” policy toward conflict diamonds.

Simmons isn’t the only figure in hip-hop highlighting the African diamond trade. On his latest CD, Kanye West featured the song “Diamonds From Sierra Leone,” in which he criticized profits from conflict diamonds.

Conflict diamonds have long fueled Africa’s wars, with fighting forces selling the gems to raise funds for weapons.

The issue is also getting attention outside of hip-hop. Next month, “Blood Diamond,” a new film featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, will be released. The movie shows how “blood diamonds” financed civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s.

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ROME (AP) – Peter Gabriel, founder of the rock group Genesis, has received the annual “Man of Peace” award from a foundation headed by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gabriel, 56, was recognized for his work promoting human rights and world peace. He received the award Friday in a ceremony on Capitoline Hill that marks the opening of a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates organized every year in Rome by the Gorbachev Foundation and city hall.

Nobel Peace Prize winners Lech Walesa and Mairead Corrigan Maguire attended the ceremony, along with Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni. Gorbachev was absent for health reasons.

Other recipients of the award include Live 8 organizer Bob Geldof; Yusuf Islam, the singer once known as Cat Stevens; and Italian actor-director Roberto Benigni.

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ATLANTA (AP) – Whitney Houston no longer has the suburban Atlanta home she shared with Bobby Brown, according to a published report.

The five-bedroom Alpharetta home went into foreclosure this fall and was sold on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse earlier this month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday.

The property has gone back up for sale for $1.4 million, according to real estate Web sites.

Houston’s Atlanta attorney, Mark Trigg, confirmed the foreclosure to the newspaper but did not provide other details.

The couple bought the home in 2003 for $1.1 million.

Meanwhile, Houston’s New Jersey mansion is slated to be sold at a sheriff’s sale Jan. 4 because the 43-year-old singer is more than $1 million behind on the mortgage and taxes have not been paid this year, the Daily Record of Parsippany reported.

Houston has filed for divorce from Brown after a 14-year marriage. She remains in Los Angeles, where she is working on a new album.