News: November 2006 Archives

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November 21, 2006

Bono meets with Peter Costello

By Michael Harvey, Gerard, McManus and Mark Dunn

TOURING rock star and political activist Bono believes Australia will match other developed nations in lifting aid to poor nations.

The U2 frontman took his anti-poverty campaign direct to federal Treasurer Peter Costello yesterday -- securing the one-on-one meeting Prime Minister John Howard would not give.

While Bono wanted total aid spending lifted, Mr Costello stressed the importance of "aid effectiveness" -- making sure aid dollars were spent on those who needed them and not soaked up by corrupt local officials.

Both men emerged from the hour-long talks liking what they heard.

"He is a very genuine guy, he is a very charming man," Mr Costello said. "He is very sincere and it was just a very warm, positive discussion."

Bono said he enjoyed the meeting and that Australia would eventually reach the goal of committing 0.7 per cent of GDP to aid.

"This wave is breaking and it's going to happen. Australia will get to 0.7," Bono said.

"(Mr Costello) seemed to be personally very interested in the plight of the world's poor and determined to figure a way for his country to play a more committed role."

Mr Costello made no new pledge on the aid front but restated his commitment to lift aid to $4 billion a year.

The meeting came as police intensified efforts to track down key troublemakers from Saturday's violent G20 protest. And political pressure mounted over the Howard Government approving visa applications to up to a dozen foreign protesters with track records of major disruption.

Visa applications were rubber-stamped by Immigration Department officials despite warnings to the Government from security agencies that individual foreign protesters posed a threat.

Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke said the security lapse showed the Government played favourites when it came to border security.

"These reports show that for Amanda Vanstone the alert rings no alarms," he said.

"Every injured police officer must be asking why border protection was abandoned."

Police believe foreign protesters were among the ring leaders of the weekend's ugly demonstrations, which saw a score of police injured, extensive destruction to city property and a dent put in Melbourne's reputation.

Australian Federal Police and other agencies, who had spent months working on potential terrorists' threats to the summit, compiled dossiers on some of the agitators, according to government sources.

The agencies also used foreign contacts to track the protesters' movements, passing on information to the Government.

But Senator Vanstone said law enforcement and security agencies had placed no alerts on individuals in relation to the G20.

"I am advised that my department is unaware of any such requests in relation to the G20," the minister said.

Security analyst and chief executive at Intelligent Risks, Neil Fergus, said national and international anarchists were identified as being behind most of the trouble.

"Several out of 12 to 15 key organisers were from overseas, part of an international, committed group of anarchists," Mr Fergus said.

Police will investigate radical Left-wing internet chat rooms to track down members of the violent Arterial Bloc protest group. Police are also investigating tip-offs about key trouble makers given to Crime Stoppers from members of the public who identified individuals in newspaper photographs.

One site carried exchanges between members of the group planning their raid in Melbourne, organising their white-hooded disguises and expressing concern about arrests. But members of other protest groups refused to condemn the violence against police.

"They (Arterial Bloc) were part of the broader demonstration on Saturday and were responding to a larger violence," International Socialist Organisation spokesman Jonathon Collerson said.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:53 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2006

U2 Win Battle Against Ex-Stylist

Rock group U2 have won a legal battle against their former stylist, forcing her to hand over a cowboy hat and clothes she took from them in 1987.

Singer Bono told Dublin's High Court last month that Lola Cashman acquired the items without permission during the band's Joshua Tree tour.

She insisted they were a gift to her from the star and appealed against a ruling that she must return them.

In a statement the band said they were "relieved" the legal battle is over.

"Proceedings were issued in Ireland very much as a last resort and with great reluctance," they said.

They added that they wished Ms Cashman "well in the future" and they would not be pursuing costs from her, despite being entitled to.

Rosary beads

The possessions were estimated to be valued at 5,000 euros (£3,400).

U2 had been fighting with Ms Cashman over the ownership of a Stetson hat, a pair of metal hooped earrings, a green sweatshirt and a pair of black trousers.

They were also trying to retrieve a number of other items which had been seen in her flat, including a video tape and monitor, rosary beads and hundreds of photographs.

During the appeal hearing, she claimed Bono was running around in his underwear backstage at the Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona on the last night of the tour when she asked him for the hat.

The court was told he "plonked" it on her head.

In 2002, Ms Cashman put some of the memorabilia up for sale at Christie's.

She claimed two letters sent to the auction house from U2 lawyers seeking their return were defamatory, and began proceedings against the band in the High Court in London.

Posted by Brenda at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2006

Pope, Bono buy bonds for poor kids' vaccines

Securities with triple-A credit rating are part of a 10-year plan to immunize children around the world.

LONDON (Reuters) -- Pope Benedict joined other religious leaders, rock stars and financial institutions Tuesday to buy into a $1 billion bond issue that will fund life-saving vaccines for children in poor countries.

Investors bid for almost twice the amount of securities on offer as British finance minister Gordon Brown launched the project to fight preventable diseases like polio and measles.

The offering, the first of its kind, was the start of a 10-year initiative known as the International Finance Facility for Immunization.

"We will ultimately raise an extra $4 billion to deliver life-saving vaccines to children in the poorest countries," Brown said at the launch, flanked by religious leaders and Queen Rania of Jordan.

"This will immunize 500 million children by 2015, saving 10 million lives, and help to eradicate polio from the world."

Brown handed the first bond to Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace Council, who bought it in the Pope's name.

"It is the hope of Pope Benedict that the participation by the Church in this program will help to inspire others to take the step toward concrete action," he said.

Five more bonds were sold to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Hindu Forum of Britain and the Network of Sikh Organizations.

Rockers-turned-activists Bono and Bob Geldof will also buy some of the bonds and the project has the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Millennium development goals

Brown argues new funding mechanisms are needed if U.N. goals on child poverty are to be met, and wants the creation of a wider scheme that could double rich countries' aid spending to $100 billion a year.

But the idea of using aid pledges as collateral to raise funds has run into repeated opposition from the United States, which is reluctant to make commitments under one administration that must be passed on to the next.

Some lobbying groups have also voiced concern that a plan relying on future aid pledges may pose problems later.

Advocates, however, argue more lives can be saved by front-loading aid, particularly with vaccination, and Gordon Brown said he was confident more countries would come on board.

"I think gradually we'll see other countries decide it's in their interest to join," he told reporters. "This method of financing has a long-term future."

Britain is the biggest contributor to the scheme, backed by five other European countries - France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Norway. Brazil and South Africa have also committed to join at a later date.

Investment banks Goldman Sachs (down $0.65 to $189.35, Charts) and Deutsche Bank (up $1.57 to $127.00, Charts) , which coordinated the issue, said they priced it at "the tightest spread imaginable" for a new issue of this kind.

The bond, which carries a top-notch triple A credit rating, was priced to yield a premium of 31 basis points over the equivalent U.S. Treasury note, reflecting the healthy demand. There are 100 basis points in one percent.

Of the bonds sold, 25 percent was sold to central banks and official institutions, 25 percent to fund managers, 23 percent to pension funds and 8 percent to retail investors. Banks, corporations and insurance companies bought the remainder.

Posted by Brenda at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2006

Inside Bono's Dressing Room

By Christine Sams, Sun-Herald

With Irish supergroup U2 about to begin their long-awaited Australian tour, Christine Sams meets their charismatic frontman.

Better than ever...Bono.

Stretched horizontal across a couch inside his dressing room, Bono paused for a moment to take off his sunglasses.

"I've never thought of myself as cool," he said, with a low, throaty chuckle. "Irish people are not cool -- they're hot."

The man who is the world's biggest rock star -- U2 frontman, global political activist and proud Irishman -- took time out of rehearsals in Brisbane last week to chat to S. Bono was so naturally talkative, so warm and effusive, he chatted for nearly 40 minutes. The singer even waved away his PR at one point, saying: "I'm enjoying myself."

So what's Bono like up close? A little more freckly than you might expect, his hair cropped close, his wrists wrapped in motivational wristbands (the familiar yellow logo of Lance Armstrong's Livestrong, plus the white wristband for Make Poverty History), not to mention his toes sticking out of a pair of thongs.

If truth be known, Bono didn't even make it to rehearsals with his U2 bandmates the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton -- he seemed happier staying inside his dressing room talking.

"The band are rehearsing now, I'm getting out of it by talking to you, which is great because I really can't stand rehearsal," he said, laughing. "I really do find it very hard to sing those songs unless there's people [the stadium audience] there."

To see Bono so relaxed bodes well for U2 fans. It means the band is fresh and ready for some of the biggest concerts of the year, including the Sydney shows, which begin on Friday.

"This is going to be something unique unto itself," said Bono, of the impending concerts. "I think everybody's just excited about it for that reason. I mean, it couldn't be better."

The U2 Vertigo tour had originally been scheduled for March, before it was postponed because of personal reasons -- believed to be an illness affecting a member of the Edge's family.

"I'm sure the shows would have been memorable had we gotten here last time [in March] but there's a very different mood in this camp," Bono said. "We've got a guitar player who is just on fire. I will be discovering the songs in a different way."

He candidly opened up about topics close to his heart as a musician -- including the band he has worked with since his working-class youth in Dublin, through to the fans who love and respect U2's music.

The band

"It's a bit of a street gang," said Bono, puffing his chest out, to show how the group feels when they're together. "I do a lot of work on my own, because I have to, but I'm always reminded of how much I miss that feeling [of the four of us]. It's very different.

"Sticking together is the hardest thing, whether you're a family, a business, a relationship...it's almost impossible to stick together. It's like gravity is against relationships. Everyone seems to as they get older withdraw into their own walled city, where you can be lord of your own domain. I've seen this going through my 30s, as I got to 40, I could see people ridding the room of argument. It just makes it less interesting. It may make it easier, but it's definitely less interesting. That's why, what we have...it's blood brothers.

"When we walk on stage, that's the reason why people's hair goes up, including mine by the way. There's something about the four of us -- it wouldn't happen if there was two of us, it wouldn't happen if there was three of us. There's something about that chemistry, that you know there might be the chance of some magic. Maybe that's all you can expect of a rock 'n' roll show."

The fans

"They've given us a great life," said Bono, of the fervent U2 fan base, both in Australia and overseas.

"I know sometimes you shouldn't judge your audience by the fans you meet, especially if they're in a flowerbed in your garden at home [he laughs] but U2 fans are different, they're very humane," he said.

"Intimacy is a great word. A lot of people are listening to music through earphones [these days] and you know, you're whispering into people's ears. It is a very intimate relationship and I think the place where it flowers is, of course, at these shows. You realise that people are not screaming their lungs out for you -- I've kind of known this -- they're screaming for themselves. And they're screaming for the moments they attach to those songs, the lives. Our songs tend to be with people at either the best of times or worst of times. When things are going normally, I'm not sure people listen to our band very much," he said, laughing again.

"Those songs, they open up a series of memories for people -- and big ones."

On writing songs

"I used to be really cross with our early work because it just struck me as a load of unfinished lyrics. It's a reason to play them now, because I can finish the lyrics. That's one way of looking at it. The other way is that people finish those songs themselves. Really, as a writer I sketch a feeling and I point towards a direction; I think the music is more articulate than I am.

"When I get it right, I try to put into words what the music is telling me. The music is very redolent of all kinds of feelings; you have the ecstatic side of our early work -- the pure joy of it, the punk rock energy, and then the melancholy of some stuff, then the righteous anger. I can tell you what these emotions are because I have to go through them every night, in order to sing them. Some of those notes I can't hit unless I've stepped right inside the song."

On being cool

"Lou Reed told me that growing up in the era where cool was invented he found very restrictive. And this is the coolest man in the world, in the best sense of that word.

"Painters, novelists, poets...just can't be too cool. Because that's what models are supposed to be, that's what fashion people are supposed to be. If your definition of art is breaking open the breastbone and pulling open the ribcage and, you know [he mimes his heart tumbling out], a blood transfusion -- you can't be cool [when you're] like that.

"If you have to be cool, you can't be honest, You can't say when you're afraid, you can't say when you need help, you can't say what are the wildest dreams in your head, because you'd be afraid that people might laugh at you. I've never thought of myself as cool. And yet, if I'm honest, you get better at it as you get older. You have to be careful of that. Irish people are not cool -- they're hot...passionate, Latin. We're like Latin people who can't dance or dress!"

On juggling stardom, activism and family

"It must be my feminine side," said Bono, with a sexy drawl. "I think that's true, it is a feminine thing -- the plate-spinning.

"I think maybe there's a hyperactive kid in me, intellectually more than physically. I can absorb a lot of information in a short period quite well. I work better in short, concentrated bursts -- or another way of putting that is I'm better in small doses," he said, laughing. "I think fear of boredom is the answer to the question."

U2 performs in Sydney on Friday, Saturday and next Monday night (November 13). The band will release two new songs as part of the U218 album release on November 18, through Universal Music.

Posted by Brenda at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2006

EU To Rule On Purchase of BMG

BRUSSELS (AP) - EU regulators on Monday set a Dec. 8 deadline to rule on Universal Music Group's plans to buy BMG Music Publishing for $2.09 billion.

BMG - owned by German media company Bertelsmann AG - has the rights to more than a million songs by recording artists such as Nelly, Maroon 5 and Coldplay, as well as classic hits by the Beach Boys, Barry Manilow and other entertainers.

Vivendi SA's Universal is the world's largest music company.

Its purchase of BMG Music Publishing must be cleared by both EU and U.S. regulators. It is likely to face careful scrutiny in Europe after an EU court in July overturned the European Commission's go-ahead from a merger between the music units of Sony and Bertelsmann AG.

That deal - reducing the number of major record companies from five to four - must be re-examined and analysts warned it could raise the stakes for similar mergers. The Commission has already said it had to watch the music sector closely to check that antitrust rules are not being broken.

EMI suspended $4.6 billion takeover talks with U.S. rival Warner Music Group after the court ruling since it cast doubt on whether an EMI-Warner deal would receive regulatory approval.

The Court of First Instance - the EU's second-highest court - said regulators had not properly shown that there was a monopoly in the recording industry before the deal or that there would not be one afterward.

It also said the Commission did not explain why it dropped earlier charges that the deal could exacerbate "tacit collusion" in the industry, leading to higher CD prices and less choice for consumers in a market where there is already too little competition.

Posted by Brenda at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2006

U218 Singles Will Be Released on November 21, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- U218 Singles is the first single disc collection to span the band's career from Boy (1980) to How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004). Also included are two tracks recorded last month with producer Rick Rubin at Abbey Road Studios in London: The Saints Are Coming (with Green Day) and a new, previously unreleased track Window In The Skies.
U218 Singles will be released on CD and 12" vinyl and as a full length DVD featuring the single promo videos. The collection will also be available as a limited edition CD with a bonus DVD of 10 tracks recorded live in Milan, Italy on the Vertigo//05 tour.

The full tracklisting is as follows:
1. Beautiful Day
2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
3. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
4. With Or Without You
5. Vertigo
6. New Year's Day
7. Mysterious Ways
8. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
9. Where The Streets Have No Name
10. Sweetest Thing
11. Sunday Bloody Sunday
12. One
13. Desire
14. Walk On
15. Elevation
16. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
17. The Saints Are Coming
18. Window In The Skies

U2 will be back on tour in November and December, with shows in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Hawaii.
Source: Interscope Records

Posted by Brenda at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2006

Mysterious ways: U2 in 3-D concert film

By Gregg Goldstein

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - U2's Vertigo world tour may soon create a real sense of vertigo among moviegoers as the Irish rockers are planning to release their first 3-D concert film next year.

The untitled feature, being readied for a summer or fall release, will draw from more than 700 hours of footage shot during the trek's South American leg in February and March. In conjunction with its release, U2 might take part in the first live 3-D performance projected in theaters nationwide.

The film was directed by Mark Pellington ("Arlington Road"), who began his career by shooting U2's seminal "One" video, and Catherine Owens, a creative director on several U2 world tours.

A representative for the band called it "the first-ever 3-D multicamera live shoot." Editing is underway in New York. Discussions are under way with several major studio distributors.

3ality Digital Entertainment, the project's producer, put together of the largest assemblages of 3-D camera technology ever used for a single project.

It is expected that the film will screen nationwide using the Real D technology put in place by theaters that showing the current digital 3-D release of "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas."

Real D unveiled the first theatrically projected live 3-D event last week at the ShowEast convention of movie theater owners in Orlando, Fla. It is planning a live 3-D concert presentation next fall, and sources said it might be a U2 concert.

Posted by Brenda at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

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