Bono named among 100 most influential people in world

U2 STAR Bono has been named along with people like US president George Bush, Pope Benedict, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and computer supremo Bill Gates as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The 2006 TIME 100 list includes 79 men and 25 women from 29 different countries, with Bono Ireland’s sole representative.

The magazine has categorised them in five groupings: Heroes and Pioneers; Leaders and Revolutionaries; Scientists and Thinkers; Builders and Titans and Artists and Entertainers, with Bono listed among the Hero and Pioneers.

Bono last made the list in 2004, when he was listed in the Heroes and Icons section.

Six of those named on this year’s list also featured on 2005’s list — Mr Bush, Mr Gates, former US president Bill Clinton, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and TV presenter Oprah Winfrey.

But some names this year will cause surprise.

Film and producer JJ Abrams, for instance, makes the top 100, on the strength of the success of his Lost television series.

Another making the list is Jimmy Wales, founder and president of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which now has more than one million articles in English.

Others, unquestionably worthy of inclusion, will still be relatively unknown to most people.

Among them are Jim Yong Kim, the director of the HIV department at the World Health Organisation.

“Working for the World Health Organisation, Kim created a campaign to increase the number [of AIDS patients] treated to three million people by 2005,” writes Time magazine. “He called the effort 3 by 5. An impossible goal, many experts felt, and they were right. But by 2005, more than one million new patients were being treated, and the total in Africa had increased eightfold.”

Bono is included for his work on Third World debt relief. In a tribute in the magazine, US senator Jesse Helms says of the star: “Bono helped me understand the scope of the tragedy in Africa, especially the pain it is bringing to infants and children and their families.”