Gates couple, Bono get Time award

The 2005 ''Person of the Year" package hits newsstands today.

''For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and reengineering 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," the magazine said.

Time praised the Gates couple for building the world's largest charity -- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has a $29 billion endowment -- and for ''giving more money away faster than anyone ever has" in 2005.

The foundation has saved at least 700,000 lives in poor countries by investing in vaccination programs, has donated computers and Internet access to 11,000 libraries, and has sponsored the biggest scholarship fund in history, Time said.

Time said Bono's campaign to make rich countries address the debt of poorer ones has had an equally impressive impact on the world.

In 2005, ''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.

Bono has earned a remarkable number of political allies around the world and in Washington, Time said. ''Bono's great gift is to take what has made him famous -- charm, clarity of voice, an ability to touch people in their secret heart -- combine those traits with a keen grasp of the political game and obsessive attention to detail, and channel it all toward getting everyone, from world leaders to music lovers, to engage with something overwhelming in its complexity," it said.