Nobel

Dec. 12 (UPI) — Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi reportedly was arrested Friday by Iranian authorities, according to the foundation in her name.

The Paris-based rights group said that security and police forces “violently detained” Mohammadi and other human rights activists during a memorial for Khosrow Alikordi, a lawyer recently discovered dead.

“Further details remain unavailable at this time,” the Narges Foundation posted on social media on behalf of Mohammadi.

The organization said her precise location inside Iran was unknown, citing accounts and information via her brother, Mehdi.

Mohammadi is one of Iran’s foremost human rights lawyers and the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

She was serving a total of 31 years on charges of supposedly acting against national security and spreading propaganda.

Mohammadi spent much of the last two decades in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, which is known for detaining regime critics.

Last year in December, Iranian authorities temporarily suspended Mohammadi’s prison sentence for three weeks to allow time for recovery from November surgery to remove a potentially cancerous lesion in her right leg.

She was expected to return to prison shortly after, but over the past year ramped up activism, speaking out on Iran’s human rights abuses.

Last week, she penned an op-ed declaring Iranians cannot know true peace under a regime that dominates every facet of their lives.

“Their peace is disrupted by surveillance, censorship, arbitrary arrest, torture and the constant threat of violence,” she wrote in Time Magazine, calling for support in Iranian society, its independent media and for human and women’s rights.

Right-wing opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was missing from the ceremony awarding her this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. She’s been in hiding for the past year since she accused Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of rigging the July 2024 election.

Dec. 10 (UPI) — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado did not attend a ceremony in Oslo to receive her award on Wednesday as the Venezuelan opposition leader was in hiding from the regime of President Nicolas Maduro, somewhere in the country.

The Norwegian committee said in a news release that Machado had done everything possible to make what it said would have been a very risky journey, but confirmed she was safe and appeared to suggest her imminent arrival in Norway.

“Machado has done everything in her power to come to the ceremony today. A journey in a situation of extreme danger. Although she will not be able to reach the ceremony and today’s events, we are profoundly happy to confirm that she is safe and that she will be with us in Oslo,” the statement read.

The news followed days of contradictory statements over whether Machado, who has been in hiding since disputed elections in July 2024, would make it to Oslo. Machado, who has been repeatedly threatened with arrest by Venezuelan authorities has not appeared in public since January.

Machado’s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, received the diploma and medal on her behalf at the ceremony at City Hall in the Norwegian capital.

The committee shared a recording of a phone call with Machado in which she confirmed she would not attend to receive her prize, which was awarded in recognition “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

“I want to thank the Norwegian Nobel committee for this immense recognition to the fight of our people for democracy and freedom. We feel very emotional and very honoured, and that’s why I’m very sad and very sorry to tell you that I won’t be able to arrive in time for the ceremony, but I will be in Oslo and on my way to Oslo right now.

“I know that there are hundreds of Venezuelans from different parts of the world that were able to reach your city, that are right now in Oslo, as well as my family, my team, so many colleagues. Since this is a prize for all Venezuelans, I believe that it will be received by them.”

Machado, who ran for president in 2011 and attemped to run last year, has been a leader of the country’s democratic movement more than 20 years, opposing and holding to account the administration of Hugo Chavez, first, and then the authoritarian rule of Maduro.

She was elected to the National Assembly in 2010 but removed in 2014 after being accused of conspiring with other critics and the United States to assassinate Maduro. She denies the charges which she says were based on fabricated evidence.

In October 2023, she won a primary to run against Maduro in last summer’s election, to which the Maduro government responded by banning her from politics for 15 years. She was replaced on the ballot by Edmundo Gonzalez.

The results of the July 2024 were widely rejected by the opposition and internationally, including by Brazil, Colombia and the United States, which instead recognized Gonzalez as the real winner.

He fled the country in September in 2024 and was granted political asylum in Spain.

The build-up to the ceremony has been tinged with shadowy intrigue, after the Nobel institute earlier said Machado’s whereabouts were unknown.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado will not receive the Nobel Peace Prize in person at an award ceremony in Oslo but she will be in the European city, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has said.

Machado, 58, was due to receive the award on Wednesday at Oslo City Hall in the presence of Norway’s monarchs and Latin American leaders, including fellow right-wing politicians Argentinian President Javier Milei and Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa.

The opposition leader of the Vente Venezuela party was awarded the prize in October, with the Nobel committee praising Machado’s role in the country’s opposition movement and her “steadfast” support for democracy.

Machado, who holds many right-wing views, dedicated it in part to United States President Donald Trump, who has said he, himself deserved the honour and was infuriated that he did not.

“Although she will not be able to reach the ceremony and today’s events, we are profoundly happy to confirm that Machado is safe and that she will be with us in Oslo,” the institute stated.

She is expected to reach Oslo “sometime between this evening and tomorrow morning,” the institute’s director Kristian Berg Harpviken told the AFP news agency on Wednesday, shortly before the 1pm (12:00 GMT) ceremony, at which her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, is set to accept the award in her place.

“I will be in Oslo, I am on my way,” Machado stated in an audio recording released by the institute.

The announcement was part of a sequence of events more befitting of cloak-and-dagger intrigue, as the institute had earlier stated Machado’s whereabouts were unknown. A planned news conference a day earlier was also cancelled due to her absence.

Machado has a decade-long travel ban on her and has spent more than a year in hiding.

Alignment with right-wing hawks

The political leader has welcomed international sanctions and US military intervention in Venezuela, a move her critics say harkens back to a dark past.

The US has a long history of interference in the region, particularly in the 1980s when it propped up repressive right-wing governments through coups, and funded paramilitary groups across Latin America that were responsible for mass killings, forced disappearances and other grave human rights abuses.

Venezuelan authorities cited Machado’s support for sanctions and US intervention when they barred her from running for office in last year’s presidential election, where she had intended to challenge President Nicolas Maduro. Machado has accused Maduro of stealing the July 2024 election.

Shortly after her Nobel win in October, Machado also voiced support for Israel in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during its ongoing genocidal war in Gaza.

Machado has previously pledged to move Venezuela’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, as Trump did with the US diplomatic presence during his first term in office, if her movement comes to power. This would be on par with other right-wing Latin American leaders who have taken pro-Israel stances, including Argentina’s Milei and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Machado has aligned herself with right-wing hawks close to Trump who argue that Maduro has links to criminal gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security, despite doubts raised by the US intelligence community.

The Trump administration has ordered more than 20 military strikes in recent months against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America’s Pacific coast.

Human rights groups, some US Democrats and several Latin American countries have condemned the attacks as unlawful extrajudicial killings of civilians.

Maduro, in power since 2013 following the death of Hugo Chavez, says Trump is pushing for regime change in the country to access Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. He has pledged to resist such attempts.

Venezuela’s armed forces are planning to mount a guerrilla-style resistance in the event of a US air or ground attack, according to sources with knowledge of the efforts and planning documents seen by the Reuters news agency.

Dutch paint maker Akzo Nobel is splashing into US with plans to buy Philadelphia-based rival Axalta Coating Systems for roughly $9.2 billion in stock. The move will create the world’s second-largest coatings company, trailing only Cleveland-based Sherwin-Williams.

The deal is part of a wave of consolidation that recently saw private equity firm Carlyle buy BASF’s coatings unit for €5.8 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Akzo Nobel will hold 55% of the combined company, with shares moving from Amsterdam to New York. The resulting company will have around $17 billion in revenue and a $25 billion enterprise value.

The companies have a history, with merger talks dating back to 2017, but they “could not negotiate a transaction” that met their “criteria,” Axalta’s then-CEO Charles Shaver said at the time.

Private equity firms circled Axalta in 2019; Clayton, Dubilier & Rice was among the firms considering a bid alongside PPG Industries. Platinum Equity reportedly partnered with Koch Industries Inc. to also make an offer.

Akzo and Axalta agreed to frame the transaction as a “merger of equals,” with Akzo Nobel investors receiving a special €2.5 billion cash dividend, while the new board will feature four directors from each company plus three independents. Current Akzo Nobel CEO Gregoire Poux-Guillaume will lead the combined firm, with Axalta Board Chair Rakesh Sachdev taking the helm at the new board.

“Management has its work cut out convincing investors this is the right step,” Bernstein analyst James Hooper noted wryly. “Revenue growth expectations need some serious color.”

The merger combines strengths in consumer brands like Dulux, Cuprinol, and Hammerite with Axalta’s industrial coatings, including powder coatings for cars. The unified company will operate in over 160 countries. It aims to realize $600 million in run-rate synergies, 90% of which are expected within three years.

The combined entity’s headquarters will remain in Amsterdam and Philadelphia.

STOCKHOLM — Hungarian László Krasznahorkai, who won the Nobel Prize in literature for his lyrical novels that combine a bleak worldview with mordant humor, gave a lecture in Stockholm on Sunday in one of his rare public appearances.

The lecture was part of the Nobel week that is underway in Stockholm and Oslo with laureates holding news conferences and giving speeches before they are awarded the prestigious prizes.

Krasznahorkai’s lecture, which he gave in Hungarian, ranged across topics such as old and new angels, human dignity, hope or the lack thereof, rebellion and his observations of a clochard — or tramp — on the Berlin subway.

He introduced his lecture, according to the English translation, by saying that “on receiving the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, I originally wished to share my thought with you on the subject of hope, but as my stories of hope have definitely come to an end, I will now speak about angels.”

As opposed to “the angels of old,” the new angels, Krasznahorkai said, “have no wings, but they also have no message, none whatsoever. They are merely here among us in their simple street clothes, unrecognizable if they so wish.”

“They just stand there and look at us, they are searching for our gaze, and in this search there is a plea for us, to look into their eyes, so that we ourselves can transmit a message to them, only that unfortunately, we have no message to give,” the author said.

Expressing himself in his long, winding trademark sentences full of apocalypse and without full stops, he says it comes as a shock when he “detects the horrific story of these new angels that stand before me, the story that they are sacrifices, sacrifices: and not for us, but because of us, for every single one of us, because of every single one of us, angels without wings and angels without a message, and all the while knowing that there is war, war and only war, war in nature, war in society, and this war is being waged not only with weapons, not only with torture, not only with destruction: of course, this is one end of the scale, but this war proceeds at the opposite of the scale as well, because one single bad word is enough.”

When the Nobel judges announced the award for Krasznahorkai in October, they described the 71-year-old as “a great epic writer” whose work “is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess.”

“Krasznahorkai’s work can be seen as part of a Central European tradition,” the Nobel Prize organization said. ”Important features are pessimism and apocalypse, but also humor and unpredictability.”

His novels include “Satantango,” “The Melancholy of Resistance,” “War and War,” “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming” and “Herscht 07769,” which are available in English.

Last year’s winner was South Korean author Han Kang. The 2023 winner was Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, whose work includes a seven-book epic made up of a single sentence.

Meanwhile, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Kristian Harpviken, said Saturday that Venezuelan Peace Prize laureate and opposition leader María Corina Machado will come to Oslo this week to receive her award in person.

The 58-year-old, who won for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation, has been in hiding and has not been seen in public since January.

Harpviken told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that Machado was expected to personally pick up the prize Wednesday.

“I spoke with the Peace Prize winner last night, and she will come to Oslo,” Harpviken said, according to NRK.

The Nobel Prize award ceremonies will be held Wednesday on the anniversary of founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. The award ceremony for peace is in Oslo and the other ceremonies are in Stockholm.