Bono has been on the cover of countless magazines over the past 25 years, but never one that called him "Person of the Year." The U2 frontman will be seen this week on the cover of Time magazine's annual year-end issue, sharing the honor with billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda.

"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," the magazine explains in the issue that hits stands Monday (December 19).

The three were lauded in the issue for being Good Samaritans who have made a difference around the world with their efforts to find ways to eradicate poverty and death by preventable disease. The magazine's managing editor, James Kelly, told Reuters, "Natural disasters are terrible things, but what defines us is not what happens to us, but how we react to it. ... When you look at the number of people who die from the kind of diseases and poverty that the Gateses and Bono are fighting, the death tolls are far greater than what occurs in natural disasters or wars."

The issue describes how an unlikely alliance was formed between the rock star and the computing billionaire and his wife during a 2002 dinner in which they discussed their mutual desire to aid the world's poor. The trio claimed the honor for their work to combat such diseases as malaria in Africa and HIV/AIDS and poverty that kills 8 million people a year.

In addition to constantly lobbying American and other world leaders for more debt relief and AIDS relief for the world's poorest nations, Bono teamed with Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof this year to head a worldwide campaign to tackle poverty in Africa by canceling the debts of the poorest countries in the world and raise awareness of the issues with the global all-star Live 8 concerts in July. While Bono has gained a reputation for his pugnaciousness and knowledge of world affairs among politicians, the U2 singer said having Gates' reputation for business savvy didn't hurt. "When an Irish rock star starts talking about it, people go, 'Yeah, you're paid to be indulged and have these ideas.' But when Bill Gates says you can fix malaria in 10 years, they know he's done a few spreadsheets," Bono told Time.

But Bono did his bit as well this year. Partly due to popular pressure instigated by his and Geldof's actions and concerts, the world's industrialized nations agreed in July to double annual aid to poor countries over the next five years to around $100 billion in 2010, and to cancel poor countries' debt (see [article id="1505413"]"G8 Leaders Double African Aid To $50 Billion"[/article]). Bono, though used to accolades and rarely caught shying from the spotlight, said he was humbled by the Time honor. "There are a lot of people who could be here," he said in a posting on the U2 official Web site. "What's really key is, all of us are in agreement that this can be a generation that can end extreme poverty. And by that we mean stupid, daft poverty where 3,000 kids are dying every day of a mosquito bite in Africa. Malaria. We can fix stuff like that. That's the kind of feelings I'm having right now."

The issue also praises the Gateses -- whose Gates Foundation is the world's richest with a $29 billion endowment -- for helping to fund initiatives for hundreds of projects around the world primarily focused on public health. The foundation has given away nearly half a billion dollars in 2005 for what it calls Grand Challenges, in which they asked the best brains in the world how they would solve a huge problem, like inventing a vaccine that needs no needles and no refrigeration, but also for helping to vaccinate children against TB and malaria and developing new drugs for curable diseases and funding educational programs and scholarships in the U.S. and around the world.

Gates told the magazine he wasn't sure at first if meeting with Bono to discuss world affairs was worth his time. "World health is immensely complicated. It doesn't really boil down to a 'Let's be nice' analysis. So I thought a meeting wouldn't be all that valuable," Gates said. But after sitting down with the singer, Gates said he soon changed his mind. "He really reads this stuff; he cares about the complexity."

The magazine, which has been picking a person of the year since 1927, also tapped former U.S. presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton as "Partners of the Year" for their efforts after last December's Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Among the "People Who Mattered" on the magazine's list were George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, new Supreme Court chief Justice John Roberts, peace activist Cindy Sheehan, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, Darth Vader and Kanye West.

For more on Bill Gates, check out the feature "The Notorious B.G."