U2 frontman Bono and Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, have been named "Persons of the Year" by Time magazine.
The magazine says its aim is to honor "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill."
The Irish rocker has been instrumental in the debt relief campaign for poor countries. In 2002, he co-founded DATA - Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa - to help troubled African nations. The Gates' were praised for their creation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has become the world's biggest charity with a $29 billion (£16.3 billion) endowment which, among other things, helps in the fight against infectious diseases.
The article reads "For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are Time's Persons of the Year."
