U2 frontman Bono reveals his ‘neardeath experience’

NEWDELHI: U2 frontman Bono has revealed he had a “near-death” experience while making the band’s new album Songs of Experience but declined to go into the details.

The experience was like an “extinction event” that influenced the music on the new album and made him realise he is “not a tank”, the 57-year-old musician and activist told Rolling Stone magazine.

There have been several reports of Bono grappling with a serious health condition during the recording of the album but this is the first time the singer has spoken about it.

Though he was initially reluctant to talk about the incident, Bono told the magazine’s found Jann Wenner: “It’s just a thing that...people have these extinction events in their lives; it could be psychological or it could be physical. And, yes, it was physical for me, but I think I have spared myself all that soap opera.

“Especially with this kind of celebrity obsession with the minutiae of peoples’ lives – I have got out of that. I want to speak about the issue in a way that lets people fill in the blanks of what they have been through, you know?”

Bono said the experience had left him “very alone and very frightened”. “I was suffocating. That was the most frightening thing that could happen to me because I am in pain.” WASHINGTON: In a van carrying a group of reporters to the White House, a yell went up from a corner: “They hugged”. The reference was to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his host President Donald Trump. It was June 26. They would hug two more times that day.

They have met several times since, and hugged. The leaders and their countries have moved past the usual awkwardness of dealing with a new administration, specially one led by an unpredictable president. Officials on both sides say Modi and Trump share a close rapport.

They will need every bit of it as their governments deal with trade and immigration — read H-1b—that are likely to emerge as top challenges confronting relations in 2018.

Pakistan is likely to be the main foreign policy issue as New Delhi looks for follow-up actions on Trump administration’s tough rhetoric to force Islamabad to act decisively against terrorists.

Trade is likely to post the first challenge, with the lapsing of Generalized System of Preferences, a programme that allows some developing countries to export products duty-free to the US. India is its top beneficiary, and hopes to continue the preferential treatment.