Recently in the Political News Category

Cuban dissident Oscar Elias Biscet says the praise from Bono at a Miami South Florida concert was for the Cuban people overall.

By Juan O. Tamayo, The Miami Herald

Cuba's leading dissident, Oscar Elias Biscet, said he "was shaking with happiness" as he learned Thursday that rock star and social activist Bono had sung his praises during a jam-packed U2 concert in Miami.

The 73,000-strong audience at the Sun Life stadium roared with delight Wednesday when Bono urged support for the 49-year-old Biscet and declared that "some day soon Cuba will be free."

"As you read me what he said, I was shaking with happiness because it showed it's good when one is chosen as a symbol of his people," Biscet told El Nuevo Herald, which first told him of Bono's comments.

The threatened protests over U2's alleged tax avoidance prove that Glastonbury's founding spirit has been rekindled

Ros Wynne-Jones, The Guardian

'Did I disappoint you, or leave a bad taste in your mouth?" At Glastonbury this month, U2's headline set is more than likely to include One, the band's enduring hit - and the name of lead singer Bono's advocacy organisation for the world's poorest people. Originally released as a benefit single for Aids research, the song's lyrics carry an unintentional pertinence for the protesters threatening to use the festival to highlight the band's alleged tax avoidance.

The martyring of Saint Bono will take place courtesy of Art Uncut, a subsidiary of the tax avoidance campaign UK Uncut. It plans a series of actions over the Glastonbury weekend, stopping short of disrupting U2's set but an acute embarrassment to a band that has at times foregrounded morality over music.

Brian Boyd, The Irish Times

U2 WILL be making a long-awaited first appearance at the Glastonbury festival on Friday, June 24th, but lobby group Art Uncut will not be cheering them on.

Members of the organisation say they will be staging a "highly visible" protest from the audience to draw attention to what they claim is the band's tax avoidance.

By Michelle Jones, Independent Online

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma proudly holds up a tiny, red object and the assembled group of journalists strain to see what is in his hand.

The iPod was a gift from U2 singer Bono, Zuma explained.

Bono said it was an iPod nano from his own Product Red brand created to raise awareness and funds to combat HIV/Aids in Africa.

The statesman and frontman met yesterday morning in Cape Town at Genadendal, the president's official residence.

Steve Hofmeyr's "tweet" on Twitter

Stormy Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr has stirred more trouble, rewriting Irish band U2's lyrics to their song Sunday Bloody Sunday, with its own parental-guidance warning, on his website.

By Andile Ndlovu, Times Live

Hofmeyr boycotted the band's concert at the FNB stadium on Sunday, and claimed he threw his two tickets, worth a collective R5000 into the Jukskei River.

He did so in protest after a newspaper report that U2 lead singer Bono supported political struggle songs, including the controversial Shoot the Boer song, sung by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema.

The Irish singer and political and human rights activist reportedly said struggle songs had a place, but should not be sung in public places and a "certain community. It's pretty dumb," he said.

The Irish pop star Bono has been criticised for apparently endorsing a song which includes the lyric: "Shoot the Boer".

BBC News Africa

The U2 frontman said the song, which was sung during the fight against apartheid, had its place, like music supporting the Irish Republican Army.

His comments came at the start of U2's tour of South Africa.

But callers to local radio stations said the song was designed to stir up racial hatred.

"That's hate speech. They don't know our history at all," said one caller to a South African radio talk show.

By William Easterly, The Washington Post

The recent release of the Beatles' music on iTunes, coupled with the anniversary of John Lennon's tragic death in New York City 30 years ago this past Wednesday, has brought on a wave of Beatles nostalgia. For so many of my generation, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Lennon was a hero, not just for his music but for his fearless activism against the Vietnam War.

Is there a celebrity activist today who matches Lennon's impact and appeal? The closest counterpart to Lennon now is U2's Bono, another transcendent musical talent championing another cause: the battle against global poverty. But there is a fundamental difference between Lennon's activism and Bono's, and it underscores the sad evolution of celebrity activism in recent years.

Lennon was a rebel. Bono is not.

Hürriyet Daily News

With his band's visit one of the most anticipated events on Istanbul's cultural calendar this year, U2 singer Bono took time out of preparations for Monday's concert by meeting Sunday with Turkey's prime minister.

The meeting at the prime minister's office at Dolmabahçe Palace featured Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader's daughter, Sümeyye Erdoğan, Turkey's chief European Union negotiator, Egemen Bağış, and State Minister Hayati Yazıcı.

Bono gave the Turkish prime minister a red iPod Nano, which he said would benefit the Global Fund to Fight Against AIDS.

The Irish rock star also told Erdoğan he knew the prime minister was a great fan of Turkish classical music. The prime minister then posed with the band for the press to take photos although the rest of their meeting occurred behind closed doors.

Brian Boyd, The Irish Times

BONO, AFTER a few impatient months spent recuperating from back surgery, has resumed tour duties - and is also back bending politicians' ears and arguing the case of Africa's poor and the continuing scourge of HIV and Aids on the continent.

In Russia this week for a U2 show, the now 50-year-old singer took the time to meet the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. Bono wasn't talking rock riffs with the music-loving leader: he was making the case for Russia to write off the money owed to it by poverty-stricken African countries, and explaining how 40 US cents a day could eliminate the transfer of HIV from mother to child by 2015.

Bono's humanitarian and advocacy work on behalf of the African continent has seen him nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize and awarded a knighthood in the British honours list. "Believe me, I know how absurd it is to have a rock star talk about the World Health Organisation or debt relief or HIV/Aids in Africa," he has said of his time strolling the corridors of power in his leather jacket and sunglasses.

Luke Harding, The Guardian

It had seemed like a relationship that was destined to be long and even meaningful, but now it appears to have gone wrong very quickly.

Against a balmy Black Sea backdrop, U2's frontman, Bono, and Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, had swapped views on poverty, ecology and music on Tuesday. Bono even made fun of Medvedev's devotion to Deep Purple. "I come here to cross the great divide between me, a Led Zeppelin fan and you, the Deep Purple fan," Bono joked, strolling next to Russia's leader at his summer residence.

A day later, U2's first concert in Russia ended in political controversy.

The Moscow authorities took a dim view when activists from Amnesty and Greenpeace put up tents at the concert venue and invited fans to sign petitions. Officials detained five Amnesty volunteers hours before the show started and ordered others to remove their Amnesty T-shirts and to tear down their headquarters.