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Britain's Peter Higgs and Francois Englert of Belgium won the Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle that explains how elementary matter attained the mass to form stars and planets. The insight has been hailed as one of the most important in the understanding of the cosmos. Without the Higgs mechanism all particles would travel at the speed of light and atoms would not exist.

Ig Nobel Prize in physics goes to research about walking on water on the moon.Every year in December, the Swedish Academy of Sciences hands out Nobel Prizes for the most important discoveries in science. A few months before, in less grand circumstances, the magazine Annals of Improbable Research The Ig Nobels are given to research that ‘first makes people laugh, and then makes them think’. The categories vary year to year but mostly cover science and engineering, with peace and literature occasionally thrown in, too. Previous awards have been handed out to projects like minimizing the risk of colonoscopy...

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Editor's Note: Although President Obama had only been in office for 12 days before the nominations for this year's Nobel Peace prize closed the entire process actually takes a full year... Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. Over the last decade the only requirement to win the prize was that the nominee had to be critical of George W. Bush (see Al Gore, Mohamed El Baradei and Jimmy Carter). President Obama has broken new ground here. Nominations for potential winners of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize ended on February 1. The president took office only 12 days...

BRUSSELS, August 30 (Itar-Tass) - More than 10 NATO countries have "most definitely" refused any forms of involvement in a U S contemplated operation against Syria, an informed source here told Itar-Tass.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons. Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The...

Pope Francis met relatives of the worst anti-Jewish attack in Argentina’s history, and supported their efforts to discover the truth and obtain justice. They are nominating him for the Nobel Prize for Peace, for the work he did THE POPE WITH HIS FRIENDS Relatives and friends of victims of the worst attack on Jews since World War II, which took place in Buenos Aires in 1994, are nominating Pope Francis for the Nobel Prize for Peace.  The group announced this after a 90-minute private audience with him in the Vatican on July 5, during which he expressed support for their...

Middle East: With the formal determination that Syria has used chemical weapons, the stage is set for U.S. intervention, with Hezbollah and Iran on the other side. How´s that Arab Spring working out, Mr. President? Following our less-than-stellar attempts at regime change in Egypt and Libya — aiding in the ouster of Egypt´s Hosni Mubarak and the overthrow and death of Moammar Gadhafi — the administration, even by its own elastic standards, has decided it can no longer afford to kick the Syrian can down the road. Perhaps it just needs a good war to grab the headlines

Uganda's Pastor Umar Mulinde had the incredible courage to convert from Islam to Christianity, and even to become a Christian minister, well knowing the mortal risk he was taking. Islam prescribes the death penalty for apostates, those who leave Islam. This is how Islam has conquered peoples and maintained its position: through the sword, waging war against infidels and beheading apostates. If there were no death penalty for apostasy, there would be no Islam. This is what cleric and prominent leader of the (now the West's ally) Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf al-Qaradawi says, on video: "If they left apostasy (rida)...

Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani activist who was the target of an assassination attempt by the Taliban in 2012 has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by three members of the Norwegian parliament from the ruling Labor Party. Yousufzai is a vocal advocate for women's education and rights. She was shot in the head by Taliban terrorists but survived...

Like no cabinet secretary before, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is being sent off with a huge thank you from the Democratic Party and some of her supporters are even urging the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to give the award to her and her husband Bill Clinton. A new petition on Change.org calls on the committee to present the prize to Hillary for her work around the world for President Obama and Bill Clinton for his post-presidential international involvement. "President and Mrs. Clinton have had a lasting impact upon promoting peace in this world. Both have reached out to...

Rita Levi-Montalcini, a biologist who conducted underground research in defiance of Fascist persecution and went on to win a Nobel Prize for helping unlock the mysteries of the cell, died at her home in Rome on Sunday, Dec. 30. She was 103 and had worked well into her final years. Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, announcing her death in a statement, called it a great loss "for all of humanity." He praised her as someone who represented "civic conscience, culture and the spirit of research of our time." Italy's so-called "Lady of the Cells," a Jew who lived through anti-Semitic discrimination...

A group of Nobel peace-prize winners, prominent artists and activists issued a call for a “comprehensive military embargo against Israel” following the recent hostilities in Gaza. In a letter, the group denounces the United States, European Union and several developing countries for what it describes as their "complicity" through weapons sales and other military support for the Jewish state, The Guardian reported. The 52 signatories include the Nobel peace laureates Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Perez Esquivel; film directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach; author Alice Walker; notorious anti-Israel academic Noam Chomsky; Roger Waters of Pink Floyd; and Stephane Hessel, a...

WASHINGTON -- Shinya Yamanaka, a scientist at Kyoto University, loved stem-cell research. But he didn't want to destroy embryos. So he figured out a way around the problem. In a paper published five years ago in Cell, Yamanaka and six colleagues showed how "induced pluripotent stem cells" could be derived from adult cells and potentially substituted, in research and therapy, for embryonic stem cells. This week, that discovery earned him a Nobel Prize, shared with British scientist John Gurdon. But the prize announcement and much of the media coverage missed half the story. Yamanaka's venture wasn't just an experiment. It...

Once again, the toothless committee of unexceptional Norwegians has bestowed the world’s highest honor not for achievement, but for expectation. Hey EU! Kissinger and Obama are waiting to congratulate you backstage. In case you thought the crumbling, ineffective, and overly-bureaucratic European Union was on life-support, the Eurozone in danger of splintering, and the single currency on the verge of collapse, a group of unexceptional Norwegians would like you to remember that the 27 member states of the EU are, in fact, the global bulwark against war and misery. But when the Nobel Committee announced in Oslo on Friday that it...

Has the committee which runs the Nobel Peace Prize been infiltrated by satirists or opponents keen on discrediting the organisation? Norwegian radio reports this morning, carried by Reuters, suggested that the European Union is to be awarded the prize for supposedly keeping the peace in Europe for the last sixty years. Was this a Nordic spoof? Apparently not. It is only a few years since President Obama was ludicrously awarded the Nobel peace prize for winning the 2008 election and not being George Bush. Since then Mr Obama has continued the war in Afghanistan, stepped up drone attacks and got...

John B. Gurdon of the U.K. and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan shared this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in so-called cellular reprogramming, which has unleashed a wave of advances in everything from cloning to the possible treatment of diseases using stem cells.... It also allows scientists to create human embryonic stem cells without having to destroy human embryos, sidestepping an approach that has long been fraught with ethical controversies. Most important, perhaps, it has significantly advanced the prospect of using a patient's own mature cells to create fresh tissue and treat disease.

This year's Nobel prize season kicks off Monday with rumours suggesting the peace prize could go to Egypt's Maggie Gobran for helping Cairo's poor, Afghan burka opponent Sima Samar or US scholar Gene Sharp. The first Nobel to be announced this year will be the medicine prize on Monday, when the jury in Stockholm reveals the winner or winners around 11:30 am (0930 GMT.) Like every year, most of the speculation in the run-up to the announcements focuses on who will take home the prestigious peace and literature prizes. Betting sites have become a popular feature of the guessing game...

Jon Lovitz ✔ @realjonlovitz I didn't build my business, either. pic.twitter.com/I8w9BLks

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has banned German poet Gunter Grass from entering Israel. Yishai declared Grass “persona non grata” in the Jewish State on Sunday, saying his poems were an attempt to “fan the flames of hatred against the state, and against Israel.” If Gunter chooses to spread distortion and falsehood, said Yishai, “I suggest that he do so from Iran, where he can find a [more] receptive audience.” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also had harsh words for the 84-year-old poet, saying “In order to get publicity and sell a few books, he once more is willing to sacrifice Jews.”...