Live 8 Marathon Begins Across the World to Turn G8 Eyes to Africa

Hundreds of musicians will today walk onto 10 stages across the globe for the huge Live 8 event. London, Johannesburg, and Philadelphia are among the cities to host the event, which aims to raise awareness to pressurise the world’s most powerful leaders to dedicate themselves to eradicate poverty in the African continent.

The event has come about due to the G8 Summit approaching next week on July 6th, which will bring the world leaders such as President Bush and Tony Blair together to discuss world issues.

One of the main people behind the organisation of the Live 8 concerts is Bob Geldof, who has recently praised British Prime Minister Tony Blair as doing more to fight African poverty than any other British premier he has known.

Geldof described and promised that it would be "the greatest concert ever."

Each G8 country today will host one of the live events – Britain, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia. In addition South Africa, former president, Nelson Mandela is expected to step out and address the crowd in Johannesburg.

Southwest England will complete the line up with a tenth, all-African show being staged, which will feature famous as well as up and coming African artists.

The worldwide marathon began in Japan today as Bjork, and McFly joined famous Japanese bands in efforts to highlight the cause to Asia, and in particular in Asia’s only G8 representative.

In London, Hyde Park has been preparing itself for one of the largest outdoor events ever held in Britain. Over the past few weeks more than 150,000 people have been awarded tickets for the free event, with more than 55,000 expected to watch on giant screens that have been placed around the park.

The show will feature 25 acts including U2, Madonna, REM, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd and Coldplay among many others.

Mr Harvey Goldsmith, who has helped to organise the London event said, "We have clocks everywhere and our message to all the artists is, we don't care what time you go on, we just care about what time you come off."

Overall more than a million people are expected to attend the worldwide concerts, and the organisers have promoted that more than 85% of the world’s population will have access to a television, radio or Internet broadcast for the events.

The worldwide line includes a full range of artists and bands including; Destiny's Child, The Dave Matthews Band, Bon Jovi, Stevie Wonder, P. Diddy and Jay-Z in Philadelphia; Brian Wilson, Chris de Burgh and Crosby Stills & Nash in Berlin; Neil Young, Bryan Adams and Motley Crue in Barrie, north of Toronto; the Pet Shop Boys in Moscow; Goth-rockers The Cure and Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour in Paris.

All of these are giving their full backing to the Make Poverty History campaign that has requested that the world’s richest nations double aid to the world’s poorest nations, cancel debt, and revise unfair trade legislations so that the promise give to Africa long ago by the developed nations can be fulfilled and poverty can be eradicated from the continent.

Geldof concluded by saying, "All of that promise will be made concrete in nine cities, four continents, one culture, 1,000 artists — all because too many people are dying on one continent."