From a brawl aboard a plane at Burbank Airport to the disturbing video of United Airlines having a passenger dragged off one of its flights, airlines and air travel are under heavy scrutiny.

In response to the United incident, members of Congress introduced a bill to prohibit passengers from being involuntarily bumped from overbooked flights and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., proposed a passenger bill of rights. But before Congress passes new legislation, it’s important to remember why we deregulated airlines.

Before 1978, the airline industry was heavily regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board, which controlled fares, routes and entry of new airlines. New routes took years to gain approval. It took a court order for Continental Airlines to be able to offer service from Denver to San Diego, for example. In some ways, airlines liked this regulation because it guaranteed them profits.

The Airline Deregulation Act signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 forced airlines to compete against each other and delivered several major benefits to the public. Most notably, it lowered the cost of flying. Low-cost carriers like Southwest entered the market. Adjusted for inflation, airfares today are almost three times cheaper than they were in the 1970s. As a result, air travel became more accessible and increased. In the 1970s there were fewer than 6 million flights. Today there are almost 10 million.

Today, the number one priority for airline customers is the price. Yes, customers complain about flight delays, airlines charging fees for baggage or to change flights, dwindling legroom and more. But survey after survey shows air travelers prioritize low ticket prices above all else. As a result, airlines, especially legacy airlines like American, Delta and United, have added seats to their planes to squeeze more people onto every flight. These additional seats mean less legroom for passengers, more money for airlines. Airlines have eliminated free meals on most flights and baggage fees have become commonplace. That’s because as much as passengers hate them, most flying decisions are based on the base ticket price.

In most cases, customers still have choices. You can choose a more expensive airline with more legroom or amenities. Many airlines offer upgrades to economy comfort or first class for customers willing and able to pay for it. Meanwhile, many people choose one of the ultra low fare airlines (Allegiant, Frontier and Spirit), where base fares are often $50 or less, with no amenities offered.

The United debacle shined a light on overbooking — airlines selling more tickets than there are seats. For each flight, airlines know a certain number of customers won’t use their tickets. If airlines couldn’t overbook, then ticket prices would increase for all customers as the airlines hedge against empty seats. The United fiasco wasn’t an overbooking problem; it was a customer service problem. United should’ve kept sweetening its offers until it had people willing to give up their seats on that flight.

Getting bumped is not a pleasant experience, but, fortunately, it only happens to a small number of passengers. Just 0.008 percent of travelers were bumped in 2015 — that’s eight people out of every 100,000. Further, since this United Airlines mess, United has reevaluated its policies and other airlines have proactively increased the amounts that they will pay to entice customers to give up seats on overbooked flights. Delta, for example, says it will now offer customers up to $9,950 for involuntary bumpings. It’s hard to imagine that they’ll have trouble finding people to give up their seats at that price.

Customers can show their displeasure with United or other airlines by flying on their competitors. If Congress uses this incident to regulate airlines, the new laws might prevent isolated incidents like this from occurring, but may also lead to higher fares. If travelers make purchasing decisions based on customer service or legroom, it will send signals to airlines and they will adapt. Congress should stay out of it.

Baruch Feigenbaum is assistant director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation.

 
OPERA ACT: Dion Lee will create a new staff wardrobe for Australia’s most celebrated building, the Sydney Opera House.
The collaboration, which will see Lee design uniforms for the World Heritage-listed building’s more than 600 employees, was unveiled in Sydney on Sunday, a few hours ahead of the Australian designer’s opening show for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia’s Resort 2018 collections showcase, which runs until May 19.
Lee’s show will be staged on the Sydney Opera House’s granite Monumental Steps, under its iconic white sails, which are covered in a geometric lattice of 1,056,006 white and cream glazed ceramic tiles.
It will be Lee’s fourth show at the building, which was designed by the late Danish architect Jørn Utzon and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1973.
In 2012, Utzon was also the inspiration for Lee’s International Woolmark Prize collection, which won the competition’s 2012/2013 regional semi-finals.
“The Opera House is a place that I’ve consistently looked to for creative inspiration,” said the now New York-based designer, who is known for his sculpted tailoring and intricate finishes. “I’m truly honored to be working with the Opera House and its staff to design their new uniforms. Meeting the needs of the Opera House’s very diverse workforce and making

Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Read More…

PRESIDENTIAL PICKS: Brigitte Trogneux, France’s newest First Lady, was sporting a sky-blue wool crepe dress falling above the knee and a jacket with metallic button details and a military edge from Louis Vuitton for her husband’s inauguration on Sunday morning in Paris’ Élysée Palace. Looking feminine, sharp and sexy, she sported beige heels and a matching bag from the house as she made her solo entry.
The event is taking place in the ballroom of the presidential palace, where her husband, Emmanuel Macron, will wear a dark blue suit from Jonas & Cie, according to a source.
Their selections for the occasion are loyal and consistent with their sartorial track record. As reported, Jonas & Cie is Macron’s go-to tailor, with navy suits by the house having been his uniform throughout the presidential campaign. His wife wore a Vuitton coat the day he won the election.
From their choice of outfits on Sunday, it is clear that neither was looking to distract from the event with their fashion choices.
According to a source, Trogneux is very close to Nicolas Ghesquière, Vuitton’s artistic director of women’s collections, to the point of being in contact most days. The pair is thought to have been introduced by Delphine Arnault,

Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Read More…

Carolina Herrera took to public forum Instagram to blast the Venezuelan government for the death of her nephew.
“Thank you so much for all your thoughtful messages. The family and I appreciate your kindness. Our only hope is that the tragic assassination of our young nephew, Reinaldo and his colleague, Fabrizio will serve to mitigate the terrible carnage and murders that are committed against our youth in Venezuela. The Electoral Results must be respected. The Communist Dictatorship must go,” Herrera wrote in a post on her brand’s Instagram account, @houseofherrera, which has 1.7 million followers.
According to reports, Reinaldo Herrera, 34, and his colleague Fabrizio Mendoza, 31, were discovered Thursday after an apparent kidnapping in an abandoned vehicle on a highway that connects Caracas to the Caribbean coast.
“Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera and their family are deeply devastated by this tragedy. They are not available for further comment. The family requests privacy as they grieve,” said a spokeswoman for Carolina Herrera when reached for comment Saturday.

Herrera’s Instagram post was the most outspoken the Venezuelan-born designer has been publicly about the government of President Nicolas Madura. The country has been plunged into chaos by his economic policies, with people literally starving, medical supplies running out

Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Read More…

P.J. Harvey returned to Los Angeles on Friday with essentially the same show she played here nine months ago, making it easy to parse the differences between her stop at the Greek Theatre on Friday and at the Shrine Expo in August on this tour behind her most recent album, “The Hope Six Demolition Project.”

And with Harvey and her band in terrific form both then and now, and the set a similar mix of the best of “The Hope Six” and best-loved songs from earlier in her career, it mostly came down to this: It’s just so much nicer to fall into the dreamy world the English singer-songwriter creates when you’re seated beneath the stars in Griffith Park than it is inside the vintage Shrine a few miles south in downtown L.A.

The top of the set was identical — Harvey and her eight musicians (longtime collaborator John Parish was absent on Friday) marching on stage with saxophones and marching band drums, setting a somber tone for songs such as “Chain Of Keys” and “Ministry of Defence,” the lyrics of which tap into Harvey’s ongoing interest in the ways in which the personal and the politic collide to shape our world, in her world, often to dire affect.

In its stage and lighting design this is a show designed to amplify the sense of drama that Harvey clearly intends to deliver. The theatricality of the night is amplified by her personal style – elbow-length black leather gloves, knee-high black leather boots, what looked like the feathered plumage of a great black bird as a headdress.

And in singing her songs, whether the bitterly upbeat “The Community of Hope” or an older warning such as “The Words That Maketh Murder,” Harvey is never less than fully committed, acting out the songs with passion as her voice delivers the same.

That latter song, a catchy guitar-and-hand-clap-driven tale of the horrors of war, earned the first big response from the crowd that filled most of the Greek on Friday. As one of four songs from the earlier album “Let England Shake,” the response “Murder” and other older tunes got seemed a clear sign that fans still aren’t as familiar with “The Hope Six” songs which provided nine of the 19 songs in her 90-minute set on Friday.

While the new work may be more subtle in style and more political in subject, that album did provide highlights throughout the night, with “The Wheel” arriving on a bed of saxophones riffing and most of the band singing backing vocals, or “The River Anacostia,” which closed the main set, blending in the chorus of the spiritual “Wade In The Water” as it faded to a hymn-like finish.

Yet the final run of songs, which focused mostly on earlier numbers, also came from a phase in Harvey’s career when she was writing more rock ‘n’ roll-oriented music, lending tunes such as “50ft Queenie,” “Down By The Water” and “To Bring You My Love,” both a familiarity — they’re among her best-known works — and energy that had been missing earlier in the night.

Other than “The Devil,” a standout during the main set from Harvey’s “White Chalk” album, the only other songs that weren’t also played at the Shrine in August came in the encore, which opened with a ferocious take on the Bob Dylan classic, “Highway 61 Revisited,” a song that feels perfect for Harvey given its lyrical blend of timeless elements — religion, war, the human heart among them.

“The Last Living Rose” wrapped up the night with a gentler melody beneath one more modern folk songs from a woman whose view of the world, past, present and future, is unblinking and clear, no matter the venue or stage on which she stands to deliver her message.

P.J. Harvey

When: Friday, May 12

Where: Greek Theatre, Los Angeles

Set list

Main set: Chain of Keys / The Ministry of Defence / The Community of Hope / A Line in the Sand / Let England Shake / The Words That Maketh Murder / The Glorious Land / Medicinals / When Under Ether / Dollar, Dollar / The Devil / The Wheel / The Ministry of Social Affairs / 50ft Queenie / Down by the Water / To Bring You My Love / River Anacostia

Encore: Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan cover) / The Last Living Rose

Seventy-two years after witnessing his buddies crash and die the day World War II ended, Buhl Palmer climbs into the only B-24 bomber still flying and squints into wispy white clouds as the California coast shrinks below.

Now, 94 years old, Palmer was a nose gunner on a “Liberator,” as the long-distance bombers were called. He solemnly looks around, intimately familiar with the .50 caliber machine guns, the cables, the bomb bays that carried up to 8,000 pounds of horror.

Palmer and two other World War II vets settle on narrow strips of metal as if they are home — and in some ways they are.

But for someone like me used to such amenities as, say, windows, the plane feels as raw as its original mission. We must carefully avoid brushing against a web of greasy cables that control wing flaps. Bare metal is the decor. Cold wind blasts through 3-foot-by-4-foot openings so swiveling guns can shoot every which-way.

As we taxi down the runway at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, four engines roar louder than a Guns ‘N Roses concert. The plane lifts, ground disappears. And below my feet in parts of the belly there is nothing but a wide open void.

For several minutes, I scream something akin to, “Holy smoke.”
Palmer just smiles and gingerly steps down into the belly. Hunching over, he navigates a narrow catwalk, squeezes between metal struts.

A nose gunner, this warrior heads for a small glass turret where he once witnessed death from above, from below — and from within.

JUNGLE CRASH

Based in Massachusetts, the Collings Foundation is a nonprofit that puts on living history events. The B-24 and several other World War II planes including a B-17 are in the midst of a national tour fittingly called “Wings of Freedom.” The next stop is Monday and Tuesday in Paso Robles.

To defray expenses, a 30-minute flight can cost as much as $450. Or it can cost nothing.

Les Gray lives in Hemet and is 100 years old. The last time he saw his brother, Roger, was three-quarters of a century ago when Roger enlisted in the Army Air Corps — the precursor to the modern Air Force. Roger Gray’s B-25 disappeared smoking and spiraling into the jungles of New Guinea.

To honor her great uncle, Sharon Mitchell scraped enough money together so she could take her grandfather on a plane that was nearly identical to the one his brother had perished on.

But when the Collings Foundation learned about the circumstances, the nonprofit offered to fly granddaughter and grandfather for free.

Mitchell, who lives in Camarillo and has a 19-year-old son in the Air Force, reports the flight helped bring her grandfather some closure. “We see these things in the history books,” she explains. “These men lived them.”

Similarly, Mark Herthel’s father-in-law, Rupert “Rupe” Ford, flew B-24s during World War II. Living in Burbank and now deceased, Ford loved watching vintage planes at the local airport. Along the way, Herthel and his wife started sponsoring rides on Collings Foundation planes.

“The planes are important,” says Herthel, who lives in Sun Valley. “But what’s really important is that they signify the men and women who were involved in World War II and the planes keep their memory alive.”

Demetrius Harakis,  born two decades after World War II ended, is another sponsor.

The son of a Greek Orthodox priest, Harakis struck out on his own when he was a teenager. Today, he owns two 1950-style diners, one in Orange the other in Westminster.

Inside the Victory Diner in Orange, there’s a photo of his namesake uncle, Demetrius Solivcas, wearing a Navy uniform. Next to the photo, there’s a faded letter signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt memorializing Solivcas, killed less than six months before the war ended when a Japanese plane bombed the USS Franklin.

“Where I grew up,” Harakis shares, “those World War II guys were the big heroes.”

For five years, Harakis has sponsored veterans to fly on the old planes to honor what it means to serve in a war that could have ended very differently.

“These are the kind of guys,” the restaurateur allows, “that I want to have a beer and a pizza with.”

GETTING SHOT DOWN

I crawl on my hands and knees into the nose gunner turret. The cubbyhole is confining, yet liberating. When no one’s trying to kill you, being in a glass bubble in a blue void feels like floating in the sky.

But the experience is far different for Dan Oldewage, 92 years old and back in a vibrating Liberator that transports him to another era.

Oldewage was barely out of high school when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He wasn’t old enough to drink when he became a nose gunner on a B-24.

On Aug. 9, 1945, Oldewage was on a mission flying at 18,000 feet when, suddenly, the crew saw a bomb cloud grow to unbelievable proportions.
“We looked straight up,” Oldewage recalls. “It must have reached 50,000 feet.”

The plume was from the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

Oldewage’s next tour of duty was Korea where he served as a B-29 tail gunner. But MiGs shot down his plane near the Chinese-North Korean border. He spent two-and-a-half years in a POW concentration camp. Five-foot-10, he weighed 80 pounds when he was freed.

But people like Oldewage are survivors. “My wife,” he proudly points out, “was from a pioneer family.” Today, the veteran has three children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Harry “Pat” Hofferbert is another tough aviator. He enlisted in 1942 and started flight school in 1943. But he broke an eardrum during a practice dive. The injury meant he could only serve on transport planes, so that is exactly what he did during the war and he never stopped serving.

Hofferbert was a Santa Ana school principal from 1964 to 1979, has been a Kiwanian for more than a half-century and taught in China.

At 93, Hofferbert’s knees aren’t quite what they were when he served in the Army Air Corps. Still, he hauls himself up and into the B-24, painted “Witchcraft” on the nose. And he extricates himself when we land.

As Palmer and I walk across the tarmac at John Wayne Airport, the former gunner mentions he saw combat in Guam, Iwo Jima. I ask if the flight brought back difficult memories.

Palmer, who lives in Tustin, stops, turns, shakes his head. He thinks of all the young men who never came home.

He explains softly. “I have those memories anyway.”

The community pool and spa at Foothill Ranch was closed Friday, May 12 after  two cases of Legionnaires’ disease were reported in the last two months, community officials said.

The illness, also known as legionellosis, is an infection with symptoms of serious pneumonia and can be deadly if not treated.

Orange County health officials were testing the waters to see if there was any more of the bacteria in the water. The pool and spa, at 27021 Burbank, are expected to remain closed until test results show there is no longer a threat.

The Orange County Health Care Agency said in a Friday letter that people get legionellosis from breathing in mist or vapor that has been contaminated by the Legionella bacteria.

“Symptoms of legionellosis develop 2-10 days after exposure, and include high fever, chills, cough, muscle aches, and headaches. Infected persons often have pneumonia and may need to be hospitalized,” the statement said.

Though those with the disease are not infectious, they need to take antibiotics. The most at risk of getting sick from Legionella infection are smokers, those with chronic lung disease or weak immune systems and people over 65.

Health agency officials advised residents that if they suspect they’ve been infected to call their doctors and tell them about the possible exposure.

“(Foothill Ranch Maintenance Corporation) hopes to re-open the pool and spa facility in time for the Memorial Day weekend,” a Friday letter to residents from the corporation said. Test results of the water could take up to two weeks.

The management said that dozens if not hundreds of people use those facilities and there have been no additional confirmed reports of Legionnaires’ disease. They hope that it was a “coincidence” those two people were infected.

“If the test results come back positive, the pool and spa will have to be re-tested until negative test results are achieved,” the letter said.

For more information about the disease, contact the Orange County Health Care Agency at 714-834-8180. Residents can also call the community manager at 949-448-6185 for information on the closure.

By ALLEN BREED, JIM HEINTZ and SYLVIA HUI

LONDON (AP) — Teams of technicians worked around the clock Saturday to restore Britain’s crippled hospital network and secure the computers that run factories, banks, government agencies and transport systems in other nations after a global cyberattack.

The worldwide cyberextortion attack is so unprecedented that Microsoft quickly changed its policy, announcing security fixes available for free for the older Windows systems still used by millions of individuals and smaller businesses.

After an emergency government meeting Saturday in London, Britain’s home secretary said one in five of 248 National Health Service trusts had been hit. The onslaught forced hospitals to cancel or delay treatments for thousands of patients, even some with serious aliments like cancer.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said 48 NHS trusts were affected and all but six were now back to normal. The U.K.’s National Cyber Security Center said it is “working round the clock” to restore vital health services.

Security officials in Britain urged organizations to protect themselves by updating their security software fixes, running anti-virus software and backing up data elsewhere.

Who perpetrated this wave of attacks remains unknown. Two security firms — Kaspersky Lab and Avast — said they identified the malicious software in more than 70 countries. Both said Russia was hit hardest.

And all this may be just a taste of what’s coming, a cyber security expert warned.

Computer users worldwide — and everyone else who depends on them — should assume that the next big “ransomware” attack has already been launched, and just hasn’t manifested itself yet, Ori Eisen, who founded the Trusona cybersecurity firm, told The Associated Press.

The attack held hospitals and other entities hostage by freezing computers, encrypting data and demanding money through online bitcoin payments. But it appears to be “low-level” stuff, given the amounts of ransom demanded, Eisen said Saturday.

He said the same thing could be done to crucial infrastructure, like nuclear power plants, dams or railway systems.

“This is child’s play, what happened. This is not the serious stuff yet. What if the same thing happened to 10 nuclear power plants, and they would shut down all the electricity to the grid? What if the same exact thing happened to a water dam or to a bridge?” he asked.

“Today, it happened to 10,000 computers,” Eisen said. “There’s no barrier to do it tomorrow to 100 million computers.”

This is already believed to be the biggest online extortion attack ever recorded, disrupting services in nations as diverse as the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, Spain and India. Europol, the European Union’s police agency, said the onslaught was at “an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits.”

The ransomware appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was purportedly identified by the U.S. National Security Agency for its own intelligence-gathering purposes. The NSA tools were stolen by hackers and dumped on the internet.

A young cybersecurity researcher has been credited with helping to halt the spread of the global ransomware attack by accidentally activating a so-called “kill switch” in the malicious software.

The Guardian newspaper reported Saturday that the 22-year-old Britain-based researcher, identified online only as MalwareTech, found that the software’s spread could be stopped by registering a garbled domain name. It said he paid about $11 on Friday to buy a domain name that may have saved governments and companies around the world millions. His action couldn’t help those already infected, however.

Before Friday’s attack, Microsoft had made fixes for older systems, such as 2001’s Windows XP, available only to mostly larger organizations that paid extra for extended technical support. Microsoft says now it will make the fixes free for everyone.

Russian agencies slowly acknowledged that they were affected but insisted that all attacks had been resolved.

The Russian Interior Ministry, which runs the country’s police, confirmed it fell victim. Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk was quoted by the Interfax news agency Saturday as saying the problem had been “localized” with no information compromised.

A spokesman for the Russian Health Ministry, Nikita Odintsov, tweeted that the cyberattacks on his ministry were “effectively repelled.”

“When we say that the health ministry was attacked, you should understand that it wasn’t the main server, it was local computers … actually nothing serious or deadly happened yet,” German Klimenko, a presidential adviser, said on Russian state television.

Russian cellular phone operators Megafon and MTS were among those hit. Russia’s national railway system said it was attacked but rail operations were unaffected. Russia’s central bank said Saturday that no incidents were “compromising the data resources” of Russian banks.

French carmaker Renault’s assembly plant in Slovenia halted production after it was targeted. Radio Slovenia said Saturday the Revoz factory in the southeastern town of Novo Mesto stopped working Friday evening to stop the malware from spreading.

Krishna Chinthapalli, a doctor at Britain’s National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery who wrote a paper on cybersecurity for the British Medical Journal, said many British hospitals still use Windows XP software, introduced in 2001.

Security experts said it appeared to be caused by a self-replicating piece of software that enters companies when employees click on email attachments, then spreads quickly as employees share documents.

The security holes it exploits were disclosed weeks ago by TheShadowBrokers, a mysterious group that published what it said are hacking tools used by the NSA. Microsoft swiftly announced that it had already issued software “patches” to fix those holes, but many users haven’t yet installed updates or still use older versions of Windows.

Elsewhere in Europe, the attack hit companies including Spain’s Telefonica, a global broadband and telecommunications company.

Germany’s national railway said Saturday departure and arrival display screens at its train stations were affected, but there was no impact on actual train services. Deutsche Bahn said it deployed extra staff to help customers.

Other European organizations hit by the massive cyberattack included some soccer clubs. IF Odd, a 132-year-old Norwegian soccer club, saying its online ticketing facility was down.

In the U.S., FedEx Corp. reported that its Windows computers were “experiencing interference” from malware, but wouldn’t say if it had been hit by ransomware.

___

Heintz reported from Moscow and Breed from Raleigh, N.C.

U2 embarked on its Joshua Tree 2017 Tour on Friday night, performing the band’s beloved 1987 album “The Joshua Tree” in its entirety as well as a number of hits and rarities before closing out the night with a beautiful new song during an impressive two-hour concert at the B.C. Place in Vancouver, Canada.

The sold-out crowd of more than 50,000 were all in their seats when U2 hit the stage at 9:22 p.m.. That’s a good thing, because casual concertgoers who arrive fashionably late in hopes of snapping selfies while an artist performs their biggest hits would have missed out this night. In fact, with the exception of “Beautiful Day” and “One,” U2’s lengthy six-song encore was focused on material not as well known.

Before launching into the actual performance of “The Joshua Tree” in honor of that album’s 30th anniversary, U2 started the show by coming out to a second stage extending about 100 feet from the main stage into the audience. There the band – singer Bono, guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. – delivered a breathtaking run through “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “New Year’s Day” (with The Edge juggling keyboards and electric guitar like a magician), “A Sort of Homecoming,” and a stirring “MLK” that segued into a spirited “Pride (In the Name of Love).”

The band’s decidedly-intimate positioning on that smaller stage allowed for a dynamic build-up when the group moved to the main stage before fully launching into “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the first song off “The Joshua Tree.” It was here where the music of U2 joined with a number of visual elements and conceptual videos that enhanced every song to come. The backdrop seemed simple, a massive layered screen with a gigantic silhouette of a single Joshua Tree rising high into the arena sky. But as the screen was used, it immersed (but never overpowered) the Irish quartet and audience with high-definition visuals.

For example, when “Where the Streets Have No Name” was performed, images of the California desert rushed by behind the band. During the subsequent “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” detailed black & white photographs of stark Joshua Trees were shown in the backdrop. During “With or Without You,” colorful, sunset-draped mountains illuminated the stage. For the first-ever live performance of “Red Hill Mining Town,” the horn section, featuring a Salvation Army Band, was masterfully seen and heard to enhance the occasion.

This crowd – like the ones who will fill the Rose Bowl on may 20 and 21 – sang and clapped along during key moments throughout the set.

With the exception of Bono using a spotlight that he held and used during the fiery “Bullet the Blue Sky,” the use of lasers and cutting-edge lighting was not as dramatic at this show as on the band’s recent tours. There was a more intimate feel with the use of artfully-made films and “The Joshua Tree” songs as the focus of the night.

This writer has seen U2 a number of times dating back to the early 1980s and Bono’s soaring vocals are always balanced with inspired, spoken thanks for those persons and nations who assist in the fight to wipe out HIV, help the poor or advance other social justice causes. There was plenty of that this night, but also blunt criticism of the current U.S. Administration.

Before performing “One” Bono urged the crowd to send a message from Canada to the U.S., getting the crowd to sing and repeat: “Power of the people / so much stronger than the people in power.” Bono did emphasize his message was not against the American people, but rather the people in power in the U.S.

It was revealing of U2’s ontinuing relevancy that few in the crowd headed for an early exit. For the night’s final song, the audience was rewarded when Bono announced the band was debuting a newly written song, the lovely “The Little Things That Give You Away,” made all the more powerful because the band members had not only moved back to the more intimate stage but they all huddled together in a tight circle to bring the magical night to a close.

U2

When: Friday, May 12, 2017

Where: B.C. Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Next: The band plays the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Saturday, May 20 and Sunday, May 21. The show are sold out but tickets are available for re-sale beginning at $94.

U2 setlist at BC Place on May 12, 2017

1. Sunday Bloody Sunday
2. New Year’s Day
3. A Sort of Homecoming
4. MLK
5. Pride (In the Name of Love)
6. Where the Streets Have No Name
7. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
8. With or Without You
9. Bullet the Blue Sky
10. Running to Stand Still
11. Red Hill Mining Town (live debut)
12. In God’s Country
13. Trip Through Your Wires
14. One Tree Hill
15. Exit
16. Mothers of the Disappeared
Encore
17. Beautiful Day
18. Elevation
19. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
20. One
21. Miss Sarajevo
22. The Little Things That Give You Away (new song, live debut)

TEA TIME AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge joined Prince Harry to host a children’s tea party at Buckingham Palace on Saturday.
The young royals planned the event to honor 850 children of parents in the British Armed Forces who died in battle. Called “Party at the Palace,” there was a series of live performances, mounted stalls and games across the sprawling lawns.

Kate Middleton, Prince William and Prince Harry met with children, their parents and guardians.
Middleton wore a long sleeve lace See by Chloé dress and LK Bennett heels. She wore the same dress during her royal tour of Canada last year.

Earlier this week, the duchess embarked on a one-day, solo trip to Luxembourg on behalf of Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.The young royal attended the commemoration of the 1867 Treaty of London, which confirmed that country’s independence and neutrality.
RELATED STORY: Duchess of Cambridge Embarks on Solo Trip to Luxembourg >>

Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

Read More…