NEW YORK, Dec 18: The Time magazine on Sunday named rock legend and activist Bono of U-2 and philanthropic couple Bill and Melinda Gates as its “Persons of the Year.” “Sudden disasters get the big headlines, but day after day other tragedies of avoidable dimensions unfold: The one child who dies of malaria in Africa every 29 seconds, the one person who is infected with HIV every 6.4 seconds, the 8 million who die every year because they are too poor to stay alive,” Time’s managing editor Jim Kelly writes.

“And who is proving most effective in figuring out how to eradicate those calamities? In different ways, it is Bill and Melinda Gates, co-founders of the world’s wealthiest charitable foundation, and Bono, the Irish rocker who has made debt reduction sexy.” The Gateses, the magazine notes, “spent the year giving more money away faster than anyone ever has.”

In January, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation committed $750 million to improving access to child immunizations, accelerating introduction of new vaccines and strengthening vaccine delivery systems.

Bono was one of the organizers behind this year’s Live-8 concerts in nine cities worldwide. The concerts were aimed at getting the leaders of the world’s nations leaders to come to the aid of impoverished Africa. They did so at the G8 summit, agreeing to double aid to Africa to $50 billion by 2010 and cancel the debts of the poorest nations.

“Bono charmed and bullied and morally blackmailed the leaders of the world’s richest countries into forgiving $40 billion in debt owed by the poorest,” the magazine said.

In addition, Bono is a co-founder of the DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) organization, which fights poverty and HIV in the developing world. From that organization was spawned the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History. Time’s list of “People Who Mattered” in 2005 ran the gamut from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to a fictional villain, a spy and the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

Along with Darth Vader the fictional evil villain of Star Wars, CIA agent Valerie Plame and Pope Benedict XVI, Time also considered Iranian President Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Apple computer chief Steve Jobs, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Chief Justice John Roberts, Peace activist Cindy Sheehan and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.