Adam Clayton 'had 2.8m euro stolen by his trusted PA '

Adam Clayton's former personal assistant is on trial for embezzling 2.8 million euro of his personal funds, a Dublin court heard today.
Carol Hawkins worked for Clayton for 16 years starting as a housekeeper and earning his trust before being promoted to the role, earning up to 48,000 euro a year and living rent free at his home.
She is on trial for 181 counts of stealing cheques from the bass player between 2004 and 2008.
Hawkins was initially employed as a housekeeper at the bassist’s Georgian mansion - Danesmoate - in Rathfarnham, South Dublin, but quickly gained his trust and was promoted over the years to the role of personal assistant.
Prosecution barrister, senior counsel Colm O’Briain, told the jury of seven men and five women  at The Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin that Clayton appointed Ms Hawkins as signatory to a number of his bank accounts.
It was from two particular accounts - known as the Fitzwilliam account and the Danesmoate account - that she is accused of withdrawing a total 2.8 million euro (2.25 million pounds) over four years.
Clayton, dressed in a dark jacket and white shirt, sat intently at the back of the court as the prosecution opened its case

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Mr O’Briain said Ms Hawkins and her then husband John Hawkins, who had also been employed by Clayton as a driver, lived at the musician’s Danesmoate home - where U2 recorded their album The Joshua Tree.

U2 in Johannesburg - the real greatest show on earth

It’s not often one gets to attend an event on your doorstep that can now arguably be billed as the greatest entertainment spectacular on the planet. Putting aside the cigarette advertisement hyperbole for a second, that’s exactly what four ageing rockers from Dublin achieved on Sunday evening, under African skies: The greatest show on earth performed live, at the greatest stadium on the planet. 
By STYLI CHARALAMBOUS.


Many will have woken up Monday morning, having been wowed by a perfect storm of entertainment events. A beautiful late summer’s day in a venue that still provides goose bumps as hordes of dedicated fans marched upon FNB Stadium. Not even the trainspotting-equivalent public loos outside the stadium could quell the enthusiasm of the thousands that braaied and hydrated from early on Sunday morning.

Wading through the crowds of people Nasrec station expelled on to the outer grounds of the stadium, one could almost touch the excitement and anticipation in the air. It easily matched any feverish build up to a Springbok or World Cup opening game, with the only thing missing the usual South African aggression towards opposing teams. People cheerfully let cars cut into queues waiting to park and even the security guards were beaming as we smuggled half-jacks of vodka into the Calabash.

Only one aspect of the day was disconcerting. This seemed to be largest gathering of Toyota bakkies outside of a Blue Bulls vs Cheetahs match at Loftus. I could imagine just how many of these spectators had been conceived with a bottle of Klippies and “Sunday Bloody Sunday “playing on a tape deck following a pool braai, circa 1984.

Given Bono’s infatuation with “the Arch”, Madiba and the freeing of the rainbow nation, I wondered out loud why there was such an overwhelmingly white audience inside the stadium. Sure, a couple of middle-aged Dubliners were never going to have the new black middle-class clambering for tickets. Maybe their supporting efforts were only noticed after the struggle had been won or maybe black leather pants and yellow shades just don’t resonate with hip-hop kultcha. Either way the almost exclusively pale crowd provided a stark contrast to the bright orange seats and postal code of the stadium.

Probably the only letdown of the evening was the queue for beers (once the vodka was consumed) and the supporting acts. Mariam and Amadou were billed as “African superstars”, which I am sure is true in their home country of Mali and some “best foreign artist a whiny voice category” at the Grammys. I understand the intention to promote African music, but local bands would have used the opportunity much better. A band with a distinctly coconut flavour like Freshlyground would have gone down a treat compared to what the promoters served up.

And the Springbok Nude Girls, improbably still together, still managed to exude a great stage presence and energy, bringing back some fond vague memories of varsity parties. But I couldn’t help feeling they reminded me of those ridiculously popular first team rugby players from high school who ended up working as photocopier salesmen and reminiscing about their glory days to anyone who’ll listen.

At this point, I just hoped this wasn’t a case of the sort-of-pretty girl hanging around with fatter ugly girls, so that she would seem more attractive. I had been disappointed before by a big band on big stage, most notably the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, live in Hyde Park. Not even the worst band in the world supporting that day, could save the Peppers from a dismal show.

But there was none of that disappointment on Sunday. Once the bland starters had been concluded, the group notorious for impressive grandeur of their stages and live performances were in no mood to let down their adoring fans. The stage was like something out of a Jules Verne novel, that looked like some kind of massive spider, with a upright protruding phallus. The stage almost stole the show as the moving visual displays and booming sound kept even the seated sections on their feet. A 360° display meant every one of the 100,000 strong crowd never felt disconnected from any part of the fanfare. Bono, slightly less vivacious than years gone by, still managed to swing from a neon lit microphone as he belted out hit after crowd-joining hit.

I had fully expected to use my leftover Fifa World Cup vuvuzela ear plugs when Bono’s inevitable save-the-world-and-all-its-political-prisoners’ soliloquy was being delivered. But I was so caught up in the moment and joy of the occasion I would have even bought a Steve Hofmeyr album right then if he’d told us to. While booze, drugs and groupies remain the driving force for many of the great bands from yesteryear, I will not begrudge them if campaigning and activism is one of the motivating factors that allow U2 to continue putting us in raptures with their magic and talent.

As entertainers extraordinaire, U2 certainly know how to play to the crowd, with gratuitous use of images and sound bites of Madiba and the Arch. By the time Hugh Masekela was introduced as a guest performer on stage, any controversy surrounding the “shoot the boer” hullabaloo was quickly erased from memory.

It seemed as though the show was over in a flash. Of lights and superlative sound, that is. The day had passed so briskly, as all pleasurable occasions do and not even the prospect of two-hour road scrum to get home could dampen the mood of the multitude that had just witnessed the greatest show on earth.

In early 2000, Bono famously stated that U2 were reapplying for the title of best band in the world after the album flop that was “Pop”. Anyone in attendance at Sunday night’s performance will agree that no other band need apply. Position filled, and I suspect for a long time to come.DM

www.thedailymaverick.co.za

Bono for Le Monde

Bono has  written a column  for  the daily newspaper ,Le Monde, France.

 M. le Président, get things done !

M. le Président is not lacking in energy. This week he will sprint from the World Economic Forum in Davos to the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa without breaking his stride or, one imagines, even breaking a sweat. There is some strange fuel that drives him… could he himself be a nuclear power? Is this fission that's happening inside his reactor?? Should the IAEA send a delegation to the Palais d'Elysee?

Whatever its source, a fair bit of President Sarkozy's energy—as we'll see again this week—has been directed at the developing world, particularly sub-Sarahan Africa. He's had plenty to say on the subject since becoming President in 2007. I remember meeting him at the G8 summit back then—his foot tapping and knee bouncing as we brainstormed with Youssou N'Dour about better ways to beat extreme poverty. To his credit, Sarkozy made clear he was willing to meet with the activist community, and he had a head full of fresh ideas to share. He wanted to examine what worked in development and jettison the rest; to move beyond the old vertical, France-Afrique relationships and get horizontal; and to build partnerships motivated not by guilt about the past but, instead, by optimism about the future.

So far, the transformational talk hasn't turned into transformational action.

These words won't surprise or offend him. He is the first politician—certainly the first head of state—who has given me express permission to, in his words, “torture” him. In a private moment he encouraged me to make noise and blow the horn to draw attention to these issues. “I know you have to torture me”, he said. “I know you have to raise the alarm.” Well, I'm not one to turn down a challenge; especially when those much better placed to make the case than me—Africans themselves—are putting forward an agenda that France needs to hear and heed.

So here I am. With their permission, I pass on these thoughts.

I do so as a big believer in what this President could do.

After all, he's at the helm of the G8 and the G20. He is still bursting with energy. He has some not-so-secret-weapons to deploy. Like Christine Lagarde. And Carla. The president's wife is the force behind France's major commitment to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Sarkozy also champions clever ideas, like innovative financing, and better global governance. And he gives great speeches.

But “it's not a matter of making speeches; it's a matter of deciding.”

I didn't say that. The president himself said that—at the UN's Summit on the Millennium Development Goals last September—and he's certainly right. It's decision time for France's man in a hurry. It's opportunity time for Sarkozy, for France, and for the world. If you listen to African leaders, entrepreneurs and activists—there are at least three big areas where France needs to lead right now.

The first is governance. Africa is rich in natural resources yet it is rarely Africans (save some corrupt officials) who get rich off their extraction. Meanwhile the missing cash risks fueling conflict across the continent. Transparency could change that. It could re-route revenues to kickstart economies and invest in jobs, health and education. The United States—prodded by activists like the ONE Campaign and visionaries like George Soros—recently passed historic legislation requiring energy companies to “publish what they pay” to officials. This is big. Could be even bigger than debt cancelation, in terms of the money it frees up for Africa's fight against poverty. It doesn't cost the US a single dollar, and it wouldn't cost France or Europe a single Euro to enact the same law and make it binding.

Second, vaccines. This could be a big year for medical science. Two new vaccines, just ready to launch, are the best hope we've ever had to stop a couple of mass murderers: pneumococal, which kills about 800,000 children a year, and rotavirus, which kills another half million. This I've got to make some noise about, M. le Président, and it won't sound like cheering. As aid levels drop and promises slip - in France and beyond - African clinics are running out of life-saving drugs, death sentences are being reinstated, and the promise of new immunisations is at risk of being lost. Bill Gates thinks you should match France's generosity to the Global Fund with renewed support for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisations. I think Bill Gates is a very smart man.

And third, agriculture. World leaders are right to be concerned about food prices in the developing world and about commodity speculators. Reforms there will help. But as the President has rightly pointed out, and affirmed in 2008 at L'Aquila, investment in agriculture is the thing. Africa doesn't just need a fair price for food from other countries. It needs to build the capacity to grow more of its own. This region has the potential to feed not only its own people, but millions of others around the world—if we form the right partnerships with and for Africa's farmers.

Action on these three fronts—corruption, health and hunger—would get President Sarkozy a lot closer to the realm of transformation.

The president is a man in motion—bouncing, flitting, ever circling round like a boxer. This kind of motion may be thrilling to watch, but if in the end it does not win the day (and leaves its opponent, the ugly face of extreme poverty, still standing), well, that is a waste. A waste of this most talented politician's brainpower, and of this historic opportunity to transform the lives who live in the wake of decisions taken or not. What is needed now, I think, is not speedy kinetic energy, but movement—steady, determined, and purpose-driven—that knocks over obstacles and proceeds toward the prize of a new 21st century partnership with the developing world that leaves the 20th century patronage behind.

That is what I've heard Africans asking France to help provide—that sort of movement. It is what Europe and the world need from France, too. And, I might add, a bit audaciously, it is what France needs from France. Poverty, hunger, and disease in Africa—these are shared burdens, shared risks to our security and economy, shared affronts to our morality. And the opportunities in Africa—these are shared as well.

We know where Sarkozy's head is on all this. We know where his heart is.

It's his feet we'll be watching.

Bono, lead singer of U2 and co-founder of ONE

 Bono is going to participate in the World Economic Forum again on Friday 28 January 16.00 - 17.00 CET, at least he appears in the Livestream Programme of the Annual Meeting 2011 in Davos. he will be in the panel "Raising Healthy Children"  where the  following dimensions will be addressed:
Access to medicines and vaccinations
Maternal health and nutrition
Social and cultural factors


Other speakers:

• Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva
• Melinda French Gates, Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USA
• Muhtar A. Kent, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, The Coca-Cola Company, USA
• Lars Rebien Sorensen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Novo Nordisk, Denmark

www.lemonde.fr///www.forumblog.org

When love comes to town: An Australian Romance

Bono wrote an article for the Australian newspaper The Sunday Telegraph:

Fertile land ... The author enjoys the view from Sydney Opera House. Source: The Sunday Telegraph

WHAT a magical place this is. Surely it's alchemy that has turned this often-parched continent into the most fertile country on the planet. Fertile lands, fertile minds.
People full of fun and mischief, up-front, no-nonsense except the nonsense we enjoy, and with a point of view like no one else's, not even us who speak, like you, some bastard version of the King's English.
The world looks here to see the Jeffersonian dream of equality in action.
The government helped advance it when Kevin Rudd, on behalf of the nation, faced up to an uncomfortable past and welcomed - well, if not quite atonement - some measure of dignity, of peace, of grace.
For me a love affair began in 1984, when U2 arrived in Sydney with some new songs: Pride in the Name of Love, and the Unforgettable Fire.
Our band - like countless Irish before us - landed here, and fell over in awe.
But unlike countless Irish before us, we had no calluses on our hands, unless you count the kind that come from guitar strings and drum sticks.
We got to skip the hard work and head straight for falling in love with the place. Like all romances, it started out with frivolity, the pure joy of being in someone's company ... then blossomed into something deeper, something you can't shake.
We discovered a shared sense of humour, of history, of adventure.
In 1989, on the Love Town tour, my hotel suite was the size of a small country. It might have been the first time I felt like a rock star.
I acted like one, too - misbehaving, and writing lyrics to fit the mood, in this case lyrics that would fill Achtung Baby, an expat's album, written and then recorded nearly too far from home.
We were already fans of the Melbourne scene, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, The Triffids and the Go-Betweens from Brisbane.
In the '90s, Michael Hutchence became a very close friend; through him we met so many more great Australians.
Filmmakers like Richard Lowenstein, artists like Troy Davies, and activist musicians like Peter Garrett, whose moral compass was setting a course even back then. Romances have ups and downs and we have not always been our best selves here.

Happy memories ... Bono signing autographs at the Rocks in 1993. Pic: Trent Parkes Source: The Sunday Telegraph

In Sydney in 1993, the Zoo TV show was a low point in our long career: the only time one of us didn't turn up for a concert.
Adam Clayton probably hasn't forgiven himself until this tour.
Australia forgave us that and other indulgences. Among them my sanctimony. I know I can be a pain in the arse. I have an annoying gene; it's in my DNA. I even annoy myself.
When righteous anger turns to self-righteous, projectile vomit is the right response.
All I can say is that you can become traumatised as well as inspired by the lives you meet along the dirt road of extreme poverty.
Watching the bright light of life go out of some kids' eyes gets me to a place I can't explain. Sometimes I forget that I'm an artist - but I shouldn't, because that's what I am, a working pop artist in a big F-Off rock band.
In 1998, our Pop Art opus, Pop Mart, connected here. That album is an ode to the kind of life that Australians seem better able to enjoy than us melancholic Irish. Even when we're being light we try too hard. We tend toward darkness.
Pop, which was supposed to capture the fun and frolics of the freedom U2 found in the '90s, turned out as a document of the ensuing hangover.
It is my daughters' favourite, which has me worried.
Over the next 10 years, U2 turned inward a bit. We pared ourselves down not in ambition or size but in sound, to a combo-sized feel re-engaging the shopworn idea of the "rock" single and trying to make it relevant again.
All That You Can't Leave Behind and Atomic Bomb were extremely personal albums, about the essential elements that get you through life.
Our shows in Australia in 2006 were, likewise, emotional outpourings.
My father had died; Edge's daughter Sian was extremely ill.
The contradiction of broadcasting such intimacies on giant screens still amazes me ... talk about bleeding on your audience. But the blood and guts, the rawness of emotion, the joy of release - Australians never fear these things. You relish them. This time round, we arrive with Jay Z: The undisputed heavyweight champion of the world of hip hop and so much else.
If you never related to rap, Jay's book Decoded is the only purchase you need.
For us, the shows in 2010 have been extraordinary for a host of reasons, not least the engineering of 360.
It's like having the audience on stage with the band, as part of the show.
In Sydney we played Love Rescue Me for the first time in 20 years.
It was a broken version, but it made a strong case for continuing with our new practice of rehearsing in real time. On this tour we've played songs that we haven't yet recorded: In Brisbane, North Star, in Melbourne, Mercy.
Perhaps with a show of the scale of 360 you actually have to make your- self vulnerable - or else it will all get too grand.
The highpoint of this tour for me has been stage left - watching Adam disappear into the songs like he was hearing them for the first time.
His bass and presence are powerful; his physical fitness is a rebuke to the demons that had him so sick 20 years ago. His spiritual strength now sustains the rest of the band. Edge and Larry, too, seem very conscious of the moment they're in as they too go on a kind of stage "walkabout." Occasionally it dawns on us that we've been doing this for a while, but mostly we go at it like we've just put out our first album.
It's quite a lot of fun to go to work with three of your best friends. It's even better to do it in a place you love.
The romance has deepened.
It's no longer just the land, the sea, and the arts but - believe it or not - the politics, too. The political landscape of this vast country I cannot claim to understand, but I'm glad that in a place that loves to argue every point, there's total agreement on the commitment to fight extreme poverty wherever it resides. Both Labor and the Coalition have signed on to spend 0.5 per cent GDP by 2015 on such imperatives.
While 0.5 doesn't sound like a lot, it is. Look at it this way: Australia is about to double the amount of lives it saves.
And if the resources are spent right, I'm told you can treble the lives saved with the same money.
Fighting poverty is a complicated business. There is no panacea.
But Australia has qualities and insights that can deliver bang for the buck. On corruption, for example, you could help root out dodgy dealings in the mining industry by making it legally binding for companies to publish what they pay to governments.
You are the experts in this sector and have real authority when it comes to showing poor countries rich in natural resources how to use them not to line the pockets of a ruling elite, but to kick-start their economies and lift people's lives.
On education, for example ... I discovered the amazing statistic that Australia has built more schools in Indonesia than there are schools in Oz. This tells me that you understand the other key piece to poverty reduction - giving people the tools to get out of poverty themselves.
It was a proud moment for me on World AIDS Day 2010 to stand beside three of Australia's most powerful women, playing Charlie to their Angels, watching the Sydney Opera House and Bridge turn (RED).
The Prime Minister, the Premier and the Head of the Global Fund's support group in Australia were proud too, because they knew they were writing an important chapter in the history of the greatest health threat in 600 years.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria has already put three million people on life-saving AIDS medication. If we keep this kind of vigil going, by 2015 there will be no children born with HIV - it will be the first HIV free generation in 30 years of an epidemic that has already has claimed over 25 million lives.
Premier Kristina Keneally said to me on that occasion that the reason they went to so much trouble on World AIDS Day is that they wanted the world to know what Australia and Sydney stand for. I'd picked this up earlier from Prime Minister [Julia] Gillard.
I've picked it up from Foreign Minister [Kevin] Rudd.
I've picked it up from Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan and the Liberals' deputy, Julie Bishop, who in turn said Tony Abbott and the rest of the Coalition feel the same way.
This is who you are. The decency of a nation in an indecent world.
It would appear a campaigning Irish rock star is the last thing you need around here.

www.dailytelegraph.com.au/