NAMES & FACES

Good Deeds Rewarded

Recognizing their contributions to charity and efforts to reduce global poverty and advance world health, Time magazine has named Bill and Melinda Gates and Irish rocker Bono as its 2005 Persons of the Year. It cited them "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."

Time credits the Microsoft co-founder and his wife with 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 is credited with saving at least 700,000 lives by providing vaccination programs, and with donating computers and providing Internet access to 11,000 libraries. The Gateses have also sponsored the biggest scholarship fund in history, the magazine said.

As for the U2 frontman, the magazine says "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."

Bono, in comparing the Gates Foundation to Microsoft, said that "the second act for Bill Gates may be the one that history regards more."

Krulwich Heads Back to NPR

Robert Krulwich , a reporter who was a favorite on the Ted Koppel incarnation of ABC's "Nightline," is returning to National Public Radio.

Krulwich started at NPR as an economics reporter in 1978 before leaving for CBS News in 1985. He joined ABC News nearly a decade later and his work is known for colorful takes on complex subjects. He once penned an opera to answer the question "What does the Federal Reserve do exactly?"

Now he will be a correspondent for NPR's science unit, working on stories about the intersection of technology with culture, politics and religion. He also will serve as substitute host for "Morning Edition," "All Things Considered" and "Talk of the Nation."

With Jad Abumrad, Krulwich will become co-host of "Radio Lab," a science documentary series produced by WNYC, a New York public radio station, and distributed nationwide.

"My feeling has always been that there's a kind of imprinting going on if you do journalism and broadcasting for a living," he told the Associated Press. "Like if you're a duck and the first thing you see is a duck. I imprinted on NPR -- it's the duck I know and the duck I own, and I'm going back to my original duck."

Krulwich is still contributing to ABC News and has a story in the works for the post-Koppel "Nightline."

Elton John on Gay Unions

Elton John says he feels sorry for the many gay couples who live in countries that prohibit same-sex unions.

"It has been a long struggle for equal rights to gay people in Britain, but now, in the 21st century, we have real civil rights, tolerance and final acceptance in our lives," John wrote in the Observer, a London newspaper.

Along with Sir Elton and companion David Furnish , around 600 other same-sex couples plan to form civil partnerships in England and Wales on Wednesday, the first day that such ceremonies will become possible there. To get the law passed, the British government avoided potential opposition by avoiding the term "marriage."

End Note

A trio of light-fingered thieves with heavy equipment made off with a nearly two-ton Henry Moore sculpture Thursday from the grounds of the Henry Moore Foundation, just north of London. The unidentified men, who were recorded on video by a security camera, brought in a crane to lift the bronze sculpture onto a stolen flatbed truck, then drove away. "Reclining Figure," valued at more than $5.2 million, is about 12 feet long and 6 feet tall and wide.

"It is a nationally renowned sculpture and very, very difficult to get rid of," said Chief Inspector Richard Harbon . Police, who found the truck abandoned sans art, fear the perpetrators may melt the sculpture down to sell as scrap.

-- Compiled by Catherine Handren from staff and wire reports