ATLANTA (AP) – The four original members of R.E.M. gave a rare performance as the group was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.

The group, which formed in Athens, Ga., in 1980, has won three Grammys and sold more than 70 million records. It has performed as a quartet only a handful of times since 1997, when drummer Bill Berry left the group after suffering a brain aneurysm onstage in 1995.

“This is going to be loud,” front man Michael Stipe said as the group launched into “Begin the Begin” from their 1986 album “Life’s Rich Pageant.”

Saturday’s reunion performance was by far the largest and the first that was publicized in advance. Many of the roughly 1,500 people at the Georgia hall’s black-tie induction ceremony clearly were there to see the group.

The three remaining members – Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills – have continued to tour and record without naming an official drummer.

Also inducted Saturday were Allman Brothers founder Gregg Allman, writer-producers Dallas Austin and Jermaine Dupri, and the late Felice Bryant. Bryant, along with husband Boudleaux Bryant, wrote country and rock standards including “Rocky Top,” “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Love Hurts.”

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – Eric Clapton kicked off his North American tour here with a blistering set of old and new material.

The 61-year-old Clapton, whose nimble playing inspired “Clapton is God” graffiti in London in the 1960s, showed fiery technique and soulful singing Saturday night with no signs of any rust after a 5-week layoff since the end of his European tour.

The three-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee dipped into his vast repertoire, serving up hits from as far back as his days with Derek and the Dominos, including “Got To Get Better In a Little While,” “I Am Yours,” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.”

He also performed such classics as “After Midnight,” “Wonderful Tonight,” “Layla” and “Cocaine.”

The 22-date tour of the U.S. and Canada stops in 20 cities. Clapton then moves on to Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

CHICAGO (AP) – The lead singer of the band U-2 brought his fight against AIDS and poverty to town.

Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson, visited the downtown Nordstrom store Saturday to promote a designer T-shirt that will raise money to pay for AIDS medication and medical care in Africa.

The shirts are emblazoned with the logo of Bono’s “One” campaign against poverty. They are made in Africa by Edun, a fair trade clothing label started by Bono and Hewson. The company will donate $10 for every $40 shirt sold to a fund supporting the health care of the factory workers who make the shirts.

The shirt factory is in a village in Lesotho in southern Africa.

Bono said he hopes to get 5 million people signed up for his anti-poverty campaign by the next presidential election.

ATLANTA (AP) – Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons says financial planning and credit stability should be a priority for youngsters, rather than spending their money on material items.

“They don’t need to just pay attention to the bling,” he said. “Rappers spending countless money are on television. But in real life, these artists are very responsible with their money.”

Russell along with other financial advisers and hip-hop figures such as Jermaine Dupri, Ludacris and Paul Wall talked about financial empowerment to about 1,500 attendees at Morris Brown College on Saturday.

A 182-page booklet, half in English and half in Spanish, was given out in a gift bag to everyone who attended the summit. The book included the importance of home ownership, credit repair, entrepreneurship and vehicle financing.

NEW YORK (AP) – Scarlett Johansson struts her stuff in cleavage-baring dresses on the red carpet, but in real life, she’d rather remain a mystery.

“I can’t stand those articles where people spill their life story,” Johansson says in the October issue of InStyle magazine, on newsstands Friday. “After a while I feel like I know more about them than their best friend does – and that’s weird. It’s better when you don’t know everything.”

The 21-year-old actress, whose screen credits include “Lost in Translation” and “Match Point,” plays a former prostitute in “The Black Dahlia,” opposite Hilary Swank and Josh Hartnett.

Johansson says: “Do I ever get nervous about this, right now, being the pinnacle of my career? Yeah, I do. At the end of (filming) every movie I think, “Wow – this is the last one! Nice working with you.”‘

She’s more confident about her hourglass figure. “I’m curvy – I’m never going to be 5’11” and 120 pounds. But I feel lucky to have what I’ve got.”

And, given the chance, she’d like to trade lives with President Bush. “Whose life would I like to step into for the day? The president’s. I could probably get some things done in the Oval Office.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Jet Li is famous for his fists and kicks, but he’d like his compassion to be a hit, too.

Li, who noted that a quarter of a million people committed suicide in China in 2003, hopes that he and his latest film, “Jet Li’s Fearless,” can help make a difference.

“I would like to spend more of my energy practicing Buddhism and helping younger Chinese people to understand life,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in Sunday’s editions. “When people commit suicide, they cause 10 people to suffer. So this is causing millions and millions of people to suffer.”

“Jet Li’s Fearless” is an epic Chinese martial arts movie about spiritual growth and national pride. It’s his first Chinese-language film since “Hero” in 2002.

The 43-year-old star recently moved his family – his second wife, former actress Nina Li, and their two young children – from Hong Kong to Beijing, where he was born.

“The Buddhism idea is to look back, to look into yourself. It’s a feeling,” he said, “the feeling is different from the material. You need to make yourself happy from inside your heart.”

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LOS ANGELES (AP) – An elephant that was elaborately spray-painted for an art exhibit by British artist Banksy was washed by order of the city’s Department of Animal Services after animal activists objected.

The 38-year-old female elephant, named Tai, was given a nontoxic paint job for last week’s opening of an exhibit titled, “Barely Legal.” The elephant was painted in the same red-and-gold pattern as the exhibit’s walls and placed in a living room that included furniture.

Cards handed out at the opening, which included guests such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, read: “There’s an elephant in the room. There’s a problem we never talk about.” The statement went on to say that many people live below the poverty line.

Ed Boks, head of the city’s Animal Services Department, ordered the elephant to be completely scrubbed down to bare skin and that a child-safe face paint be used.

“The paint they had been using, although nontoxic, according to government regulations was unsafe and even illegal to use the way they had been using it,” Boks said.

On Sunday, Tai was placed unpainted in the living room exhibit.

“Well, it’s better than being painted,” said Bill Dyer from In Defense of Animals, who objected to the use of Tai in the exhibit.

Animal control officers and the elephant’s handlers have monitored Tai’s welfare. The handlers said the elephant was regularly fed and given water, taken on bathroom breaks and driven from the warehouse each night back to her home on a ranch.

Banksy, who has managed to disguise his identity despite his spreading fame, began by scattering subversive stenciled images across British cities, but has moved on to books and gallery shows.

He has surreptitiously hung faux artworks in major galleries in New York, Paris and London, and recently made headlines by doctoring 500 copies of Paris Hilton’s CD and hiding them in record stores across Britain.

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MUMBAI, India (AP) – Indian actor Shiney Ahuja says he is a natural born crier.

Ahuja said he never uses glycerin to help him cry in movie scenes, preferring to get the waterworks flowing by imagining himself in an emotional situation.

“It’s difficult, but most of the time I place myself in a given situation and automatically tears start rolling down,” Ahuja told the Mumbai Mirror newspaper in an interview published Monday. “It’s human instinct and I think every actor should practice it.”

Filmmaker Tanuja Chandra said she was surprised when Ahuja rejected glycerin – used by most actors when a scene requires them to sob. “He feels glycerin looks artificial,” said Chandra. “For him, a scene has to be motivating enough to bring tears to his eyes.”

Ahuja plays a workaholic doctor who falls in love with a rock star played by Bollywood beauty and former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen in Chandra’s upcoming movie “Zindagi Rocks,” or “Life Rocks.”