U2 frontman Bono releases memoir 'Surrender'

NEW YORK, United States - U2's Bono on Tuesday released his memoir "Surrender," detailing the journey from his youth in Dublin to fronting one of the world's most prominent rock bands.

The introspective book is organized across 40 different U2 songs, including 40 original drawings.

The 62-year-old artist born Paul David Hewson is a long-time humanitarian well-known for lending his voice to a variety of causes, including the fight against poverty and AIDS.

In his more than 500-page book, Bono delves in to those ambitions but also his growth as a teenager struck by tragedy -- his mother died suddenly when he was 14 -- and an account of his heart operation in 2016.

He also waxes on the perplexities and finer points of songwriting, and "the pseudo-religious part of being a rock star, how we put the messy in messianic."

"U2's music was never really rock 'n' roll," he writes in the book. "Under its contemporary skin it's opera -- a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day." 

The rocker is promoting the memoir with a 14-date book tour entitled "Stories of Surrender," which kicks off in New York this week and includes stops in Chicago, London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and, of course, Dublin.

"When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I'd previously only sketched in songs," Bono said in a statement when the book's publication was announced earlier this year.

"Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept," he continued. "I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist."

"Surrender is the story of one pilgrim's lack of progress... With a fair amount of fun along the way."

Agence France Presse

Who are the rich and famous in the Paradise Papers?

Apple, Bono and Queen Elizabeth II are just a few of the big names and companies revealed in the Paradise Papers leak to have shifted money across the globe to cut tax.

The spotlight on the tax affairs of the rich and powerful comes after a trove of documents was released by the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), detailing secretive offshore deals that, while not illegal, are embarrassing for those concerned.

Here are some of the most well-known names caught up in the controversy:

- Politics -

- Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has, through the Duchy of Lancaster which provides her income and handles her investments, placed around £10 million ($13 million, €11.3 million) of her private money in funds held in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

The funds were reinvested in an array of businesses, including controversial rent-to-own retailer BrightHouse which has been accused of exploiting the poor.

- US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross holds a 31 percent stake in maritime transport company Navigator Holdings through a complex web of offshore investments.

Navigator Holdings runs a lucrative partnership with Russian energy giant Sibur, linked to President Vladimir Putin's inner circle. Russia is subject to US sanctions.

- In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's top fundraiser and senior advisor Stephen Bronfman, heir to the Seagram fortune, moved some $60 million to an offshore haven in the Cayman Islands.

- Brazil's economy and agriculture ministers, Henrique Meirelles and Blairo Maggi, are also cited in offshore companies in tax havens.

- Celebrities -

- U2 frontman Bono is shown in the leak to own a stake in a Maltese company that bought in 2007 a Lithuanian shopping mall via a Lithuanian holding company, which may have broken tax rules by using an unlawful accounting technique.

- Britain's four-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton avoided paying taxes on a private jet, receiving a £3.3 million VAT refund in 2013 after it was imported into the Isle of Man, a low-tax British Crown Dependency.

- Multinationals -

- Technology giant Apple shifted much of its offshore wealth from Ireland to the Jersey tax haven in the British Isles to adapt to the tightening of Irish tax laws in 2015.

- US sportswear giant Nike used a loophole in Dutch fiscal law to reduce, via two companies based in the Netherlands, its tax rate in Europe to just two percent compared to the 25 percent average for European companies.

- The taxi-hailing ap Uber and the manufacturer of Botox, the Allergan pharmaceutical laboratory, allegedly used similar methods to Nike.

- The Paradise Papers also reveal that Russian companies with links to the Kremlin invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Twitter and Facebook.

The Internet giants are under fire, notably in the US Congress, for the use of their platforms to spread Russian rumours during the 2016 US presidential election.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

U2 singer Bono talks development aid with French president Macron

PARIS - Irish rock star Bono, founder of the ONE campaign against poverty and disease, met on Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who stressed his wish to increase development aid, according to the U2 frontman.

"I never had many conversations quite like that, a president very open to finding new, innovative ways to solve the problems affecting the world's poor," Bono told reporters after the meeting at the French presidential palace.


"We talked about the refugee crisis and how most Europeans now understand that what happens in Africa matters to them," the Irish singer and humanitarian added.

Macron "reconfirmed" his commitment to increase development aid to 0.55 percent of GDP by 2022, the singer told journalists, a move he described as "really important for all our campaigners".

The French government has decided to cut its aid development budget for 2017 as part of wider cost-cutting measures, a move which has been criticized by Bono's ONE group.

Bono also met with French first lady Brigitte Macron, a former teacher, discussing "how to deal with 30 million girls not going to school".

The U2 singer is no stranger to the Elysee Palace having already met Macron's predecessors Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande.

Emmanuel Macron will continue meeting on Wednesday with Barbadian singer-songwriter Rihanna, ambassador for the Global Partnership for Education, to discuss France's funding of international education after she brought up the matter on Twitter last month.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

30 years on, U2 still finds relevance in 'The Joshua Tree'

LONDON -- Irish rock group U2 kicked off the European leg of "The Joshua Tree" tour on Saturday by returning to the album that tackled their love-hate relationship with America and propelled them to superstardom when it was released 30 years ago.

The band, led by 57-year-old singer Bono, is playing the entire record to 2.4 million fans on their 2017 tour, including hits "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm looking For."

But they started the London show with early songs "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "New Year's Day," "Bad", and the Martin Luther King Jr.-inspired "Pride (In the Name of Love)," which Bono dedicated to the "Rainbow people of London" who took part in the annual Pride LGBT march in the city earlier on Saturday.

"The Joshua Tree" was played in sequence against a backdrop of video of U.S. landscapes such as Death Valley, and Americans standing in front of the Stars and the Stripes, shot by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn who created the imagery on the original record.

The group's best-selling album was released in 1987 when Ronald Reagan was U.S. President and his ideological soul mate Margaret Thatcher was in power in Britain.

The tracks "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Mothers of the Disappeared" were inspired by trips Bono made to Nicaragua and El Salvador, where he saw the impact of U.S. foreign policy, while "Red Hill Mining Town" was about the impact of the socially divisive miners' strike in Britain in the 1980s.

Lead guitarist The Edge said in an interview with Rolling Stone in January that politically "things have kind of come full circle."

"It just felt like, 'Wow, these songs have a new meaning and a new resonance today that they didn't have three years ago, four years ago,'" he told the magazine.

Bono largely let the music speak for itself on Saturday, although a character called "Trump" was called a liar by the "good guy cowboy" in a Western movie-style clip.

"The Joshua Tree," which sold more than 25 million copies, marked the pinnacle of the band tackling social and political issues through rock music.

Their next album, "Rattle and Hum," did not match its success critically or commercially, and the band reinvented themselves in the 1990s by incorporating electronic and alternative rock into their sound.

Seven of their later songs, including "Ultraviolet" and "One," were played as an encore, before Bono invited support act Noel Gallagher back on stage to sing "Don't Look Back in Anger," a song he wrote for his band Oasis.

The track became an anthem for Manchester after 22 people were killed by a suicide bomber in the city in May, and Gallagher also dedicated it to the victims of further attacks and a devastating tower block fire in London in June.

U2, Gallagher and thousands of fans united in singing the anthem, ending a show that proved the enduring relevance and appeal of 1980s and 1990s rock music.

"The Joshua Tree" tour plays seven other European cities before returning to the United States in September.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Bono 'dressed as Hasidic Jew' during bike crash: Edge

NEW YORK - How did U2 frontman Bono escape notice when he crashed his bicycle last month? If his bandmate is to be believed, it's because he was disguised as a Hasidic Jew.

U2 guitarist The Edge was asked in a US radio interview why no pictures emerged when Bono -- one of the world's most recognizable singers -- suffered a serious accident in New York's Central Park.

"When he's going cycling, he likes to dress up as a Hasidic Jew, so I think that probably helped," The Edge told KROQ in Los Angeles.

The Edge sounded serious but the radio hosts laughed and did not follow up to ask if he was joking.

Hasidic Jewish men, who are a common sight in New York, generally wear dark suits and brimmed hats and maintain facial hair. The Edge said that Bono was wearing a helmet.

U2 on Wednesday announced a tour of North America and Europe starting in May. The Edge gave the interview to KROQ amid the tour announcement to reveal that U2 would not play the Los Angeles station's annual "Almost Acoustic Christmas" charity concert next week due to Bono's injuries.

The Irish superstars played a surprise show on Monday in New York to support efforts to fight AIDS. Bono was absent, with Bruce Springsteen and Coldplay's Chris Martin filling in.

The Edge said that Bono was "so upset" but had been told by doctors not to move for several months.

Bono returned to Dublin after five hours of surgery in New York. The Edge said that Bono showed the band his X-rays and that his bones "looked like a miniature Eiffel Tower."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com