Nobel Prize

Oct. 13 (UPI) — Venezuela announced Monday it will close its embassies in Norway and Australia in a “strategic re-assignment of resources” amid growing tensions with the United States and a Nobel Peace Prize for the opposition.

President Nicolas Maduro announced Venezuela would open new embassies in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe, “two sister nations, strategic allies in the anti-colonial fight and in the resistance against hegemonic pressures,” according to the Caracas government.

“The central objective of this reorganization is to optimize state resources and redefine our diplomatic presence to strengthen alliances with the Global South, promoting solidarity among peoples and cooperation in strategic areas for mutual development,” Venezuela’s foreign ministry wrote in the statement.

Monday’s announcement that Venezuela will close its Oslo embassy comes three days after Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Price for her efforts to restore democracy in Venezuela and end the dictatorship of Maduro as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America.”

Machado was chosen to run against Maduro in Venezuela’s 2011 and 2024 elections, but the government banned her from participating over her activism against the Maduro regime.

Maduro on Sunday responded to Machado’s Nobel Prize, awarded by Norway’s foreign ministry, by calling her “a demonic witch.”

Growing tensions between Venezuela and the United States, which have escalated over U.S. drug strikes on vessels off the country’s Caribbean coast, also played into the decision to relocate embassies to Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso, which are more aligned with Russia.

“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela reaffirms that these actions reflect its unwavering will to defend national sovereignty and actively contribute to the construction of a new world order based on justice, solidarity and inclusion.”

STOCKHOLM — Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, whose philosophical, bleakly funny novels often unfold in single sentences, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

The Nobel judges praised his “artistic gaze which is entirely free of illusion, and which sees through the fragility of the social order combined with his unwavering belief in the power of art,” Steve Sem-Sandberg of the Nobel committee said at the announcement.

“László Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through (Franz) Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess,” the Nobel judges said.

The work that won the Nobel Prize in literature

Zsuzsanna Varga, a Hungarian literature expert at the University of Glasgow, said Krasznahorkai’s apocalyptic and surreal novels probe the “utter hopelessness of the condition of human existence,” while also managing to be “incredibly funny.”

Varga said Krasznahorkai’s near-endless sentences made his books the “Hotel California” of literature – once readers get into it, “you can never leave.”

Other books include “The Melancholy of Resistance,” a surreal, disturbing tale set in a small Hungarian town, and “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming,” the sprawling saga of a gambling-addicted aristocrat.

Several works, including his debut, “Satantango,” and “The Melancholy of Resistance” were turned into films by Hungarian director Béla Tarr.

Varga suggested readers new to Krasznahorkai’s work start with “Satantango,” his debut, which set the tone for what was to follow.

“Satan who is dancing a tango — I mean, how surreal can you be?” she said.

Krasznahorkai has also written several books inspired by his travels to China and Japan, including “A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East,” published in Hungarian in 2003.

How Krasznahorkai came to win

Sem-Sandberg said that Krasznahorkai had been on the Nobel radar for some time, “and he has been writing and creating one outstanding work after another.” He called his literary output “almost half a century of pure excellence.”

Krasznahorkai, 71, couldn’t immediately be reached for his reaction. He didn’t speak at the announcement.

He was born in the southeastern Hungarian city of Gyula, near the border with Romania, and has since traveled the world. Throughout the 1970s, he studied law at universities in Szeged and Budapest before shifting his focus to literature.

Krasznahorkai has been a vocal critic of autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, especially his government’s lack of support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

But in a post on Facebook, Orbán was quick to congratulate the writer, saying: “The pride of Hungary, the first Nobel Prize winner from Gyula, László Krasznahorkai. Congratulations!”

In an interview with Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet earlier this year, Krasznahorkai expressed criticism both of Orbán’s political system and the nationalism present in Hungarian society.

“There is no hope left in Hungary today and it is not only because of the Orbán regime,” he told the paper. “The problem is not only political, but also social.”

He also reflected on the fact that he has long been a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, saying: “I don’t want to lie. It would be very interesting to get that prize. But I would be very surprised if I got it.”

Previous awards for Krasznahorkai and the other Nobels this year

Krasznahorkai has received many earlier awards, including the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. The Booker judges praised his “extraordinary sentences, sentences of incredible length that go to incredible lengths, their tone switching from solemn to madcap to quizzical to desolate as they go their wayward way.”

He also won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the U.S. in 2019 for “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming.”

The American writer and critic Susan Sontag once described Krasznahorkai as the “contemporary master of the Apocalypse.” He was also friends with American poet and writer Allen Ginsberg and would regularly stay in Ginsberg’s apartment while visiting New York City.

He’s the first winner from Hungary since Imre Kertesz in 2002. He joins an illustrious list of laureates that includes Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro.

The literature prize has been awarded by the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy 117 times to a total of 121 winners. Last year’s prize was won by South Korean author Han Kang for her body of work that the committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

The literature prize is the fourth to be announced this week, following the 2025 Nobels in medicine, physics and chemistry.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday. The final Nobel, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, will be announced on Monday.

Nobel Prize award ceremonies are held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes.

Each prize carries an award of nearly $1.2 million, and the winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and a diploma.

Manenkov, Lawless and Corder write for the Associated Press. Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands, and Lawless from London. Justin Spike contributed to this report from Budapest, Hungary.

Oct. 7 (UPI) — Three U.S.-based scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in quantum mechanics on a macroscopic scale, the Nobel Foundation announced Tuesday.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded British-born John Clarke (University of California, Berkeley), French-born Michel H. Devoret (Yale University and UC Santa Barbara) and American John M. Martinis (UC Santa Barbara) the prestigious award. It comes with a $1.17 million prize the three men will split evenly.

The scientists are being recognized for creating an electrical circuit system large enough to be held in the hand that demonstrated both quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels, or specific, measurable amounts of energy.

Tunneling is the ability for particles to move through a barrier. Once a large number of particles are involved, they’re typically unable to move through this barrier, also called a Josephson junction.

“The laureates’ experiments demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale,” a release from the Nobel Foundation said.

Olle Eriksson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, applauded the work by the three scientists.

“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises,” he said. “It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation for all digital technology.”

July 21 (UPI) — Several hundred current and former NASA employees, including at least four retired astronauts, backed a letter that opposes the Trump administration’s significant cuts to the federal space agency.

The letter, which included 131 signatures and 156 unnamed ones out of “fear of retaliation,” is titled “The Voyager Declaration.” It is named after the two NASA spacecraft exploring space when they launched in 1977 from Florida.

The retired astronauts who signed the letter include Cady Coleman, Steve Swanson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger and John Herrington.

Scientists outside NASA, including 20 Nobel Prize winners, also have given their support for the agency that was found in 1958 before the first unmanned satellite launched.

The letter was addressed to Sean Duffy, who was named interim NASA administrator on Juy 10 and continues to serve as Transportation Secretary.

He replaced acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro, a long-time agency employee.

“In light of your recent appointment as Interim NASA Administrator, we bring to your attention recent policies that have or threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission,” the letter reads.

They urged Duffy to oppose a 24% budget reduction and 31% workforce cuts as proposed by the Trump administration.

Out of the 17,000-plus NASA employees, 2,600 have lost their jobs, according to Politicio. And at least $117 million in NASA grants already have been canceled.

Congress sets U.S. spending.

Workers at other federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency, have penned similar letters opposing cutbacks.

“The consequences for the agency and the country alike are dire,” the letter says.

The signers of the letter cited wasteful efforts affecting the workforce.

“Major programmatic shifts at NASA must be implemented strategically so that risks are managed carefully,” the letter reads. “Instead, the last six months have seen rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission and caused catastrophic impacts on NASA’s workforce.

“We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement, and efficient use of public resources. These cuts are arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law.”

The letter lays out several things on which the letter writers say, “we dissent”:

• Changes to NASA’s Technical Authority
• Closing of missions appropriated by Congress
• “Indiscriminate” cuts to NASA science and aeronautics research
• “Non-strategic staffing reductions”
• Canceling of NASA participation in international missions
• Termination of contracts and grants “unrelated to performance”
• Elimination of programs for supporting NASA’s workforce

The Technical Authority was established in wake of the 2003 Columbia shuttler disaster that killed seven astronauts. It allows workers in all levels of the agency to voice concern outside a usual chain of command.

The letter was dedicated to the Columbia astronauts, as well as Gus Grissom, Ed White And Roger Chaffee, who died aboard Apollo 1 at the launch pad in 1967, and seven killed in the 1987 Challenger explosion.

“Their legacies underpin every conversation about our shared commitment to safety and dissenting opinions at NASA,” the letter reads.

Monica Gorman, an operations research analyst at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told The New York Times: “We’re afraid of retaliation.”

She added: “I’m already at risk of losing my job, and I’d rather speak out and try to save something at NASA, rather than just hide under my desk until I get laid off. But I am scared.”

Ella Kaplan, who also works at Goddard, as a contractor for website administratipon, signed the letter.

Kaplan told Nature.com she doesn’t expect Duffy to read the entire letter but the declaration is “about getting our dissent out to the public and saying, ‘Hey — this is what’s happened at NASA, and this is not OK.'”

NASA spokesman Bethany Steven told Nature.com that NASA is not interested in sustaining “lower-priority missions.”

“We must revisit what’s working and what’s not so that we can inspire the American people again and win the space race,” she said.

Makenzie Lystrup, Goddard’s direct since 2023, resigned, effective Aug. 1, after the letter was released, according to an internal email obtained by CNN.

NASA, with the retirement of the shuttle in 2011, mainly relies on SpaceX, a private company, to send astronauts to the International Space Station.

NASA is leading the Artemis program to send humans to the moon again in a few years. The agency is working with SpaceX, Blue Origin and Intuitive Machines as well as foreign public agencies.