Free Republic

VILNIUS, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko freed 123 prisoners on Saturday including Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and leading opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava in a deal brokered by an envoy for U.S. President Donald Trump. In return, the U.S. agreed to lift sanctions on Belarusian potash. Potash is a key component in fertilisers, and the former Soviet state is a leading global producer. The prisoner release was by far the biggest by Lukashenko since Trump's administration opened talks this year with the veteran authoritarian leader, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Western governments had...

Ms. Machado’s efforts to reclaim a stolen election by any available means, including military intervention, has long galvanized her supporters. Her opponents say these hard-line policies have a political cost.Last year, María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition, was forced into hiding by the country’s autocrat after he stole a presidential election Ms. Machado’s movement had won.Now, Ms. Machado is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, U.S. warships are floating near the Venezuelan coast and the United States is calling President Nicolás Maduro a “narco-terrorist” and a fugitive from American justice.The Nobel award has galvanized Ms. Machado’s movement....

The Associated Press recently dug up some “experts” to diss President Donald Trump as being too nasty for the Nobel Peace Prize, since he -- gasp -- "does not believe in climate change." But one of the recipients of the elitist honors in the Nobel Economics Prize is is a climate-obsessed economist who advocates a distorted concept of “creative destruction” through green policies to wreck the fossil fuel industry. Climate organization Heatmap reported October 13 that Nobel winner Philippe Aghion views “carbon taxes” as just one instrument in a tool box to force the economy into a climate-friendlier era. Heatmap...

The Nobel Committee has ignited a debate: Who gets to define “peace”? The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has gone to María Corina Machado, one of the most prominent faces of Venezuelan opposition. The committee’s language is familiar – “rights,” “peaceful transition” – but the story behind it is not. Machado’s record combines volunteer election networks with long-running feuds over foreign funding which antedate Maduro; her name has appeared in cases allegedly tied to efforts to unseat the government – charges she rejects. The award lifts an internal struggle onto a global stage and drops it into a fresh context: for...

Sir Keir Starmer has been mocked after he awkwardly thought Donald Trump was inviting him to the stage to speak. The UK Prime Minister was lined up behind the US President as he spoke to the world's media in Egypt, taking time to praise leaders for their involvement in peace deals. Thanking a list of countries for their work towards various international conflicts, Mr Trump ended with the United Kingdom, with Sir Keir receiving a welcome from the US leader who referred to him as 'his friend'. The PM awkwardly appeared to mistake this as an invitation on to the...

The three-times-married 79-year-old admitted that he risked being accused of sexism with the comments about hard-right leader Meloni, who was standing behind him on the podium. "I'm not allowed to say it because usually it's the end of your political career if you say it -- she's a beautiful young woman," Trump said in the middle of a speech about his peace efforts for the Middle East. "If you use the word 'beautiful' in the United States about a woman, that's the end of your political career, but I'll take my chances." Turning round to address the 48-year-old, Trump said:...

US President Donald Trump is set to receive Egypt’s highest state honour, the Order of the Nile, during his visit to the country to attend a Gaza peace summit, the presidential office said on Monday. President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi will award the decoration in recognition of Trump’s "distinguished contributions to supporting peace efforts, defusing conflicts, and most recently, his pivotal role in ending the war in Gaza." The Order of the Nile is a gold collar made up of three square segments featuring pharaonic symbols. It has previously been awarded to Nelson Mandela, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and most...

Watch the emotional moments Israeli hostages reunite with families Emotional scenes show the final Israeli hostages freed from Gaza reuniting with their families after more than two years in Hamas captivity. Guy Gilboa Dalal, Yosef Chaim Ohana, Eitan Abraham Mor, and Matan Angrest are among the 20 Israelis released Monday as part of a historic cease-fire deal brokered by President Trump

In hindsight, it was clear all along that President Trump didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet in being snubbed, he nonetheless proved something extremely important.His rejection reveals that the official claim of the award is false when it says the prize goes to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”That standard describes exactly the peace Trump has achieved this year by settling conflicts around the world,...

The organizers of the Nobel Peace Prize are investigating whether insiders used privileged information about this year’s winner to profit on crypto prediction market Polymarket, according to local reports. Roughly 11 hours before the closely watched award was given to Venezuelan resistance leader Maria Corina Machado this morning, the odds of her victory surged from near-zero to over 70% on Polymarket. The market on this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner has accumulated over $21.4 million in trading volume since opening in July.For nearly all of that time, the odds of Machado receiving the coveted prize have hovered around a 1%...

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado bested 337 other nominees to win this year's Nobel Peace prize. The Nobel Prize Committee stated "she is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela, and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy." The 58-year-old Nobel Prize winner has been in hiding since August 2024, fearing for her safety after threats from supporters of the dictatorship led by President Nicolás Maduro. She has refused to leave the country even though the Maduro government has repeatedly threatened her...

~As you know, I regret that Donald J Trump is susceptible to the blandishments of the Royal Family. Likewise, I regret that he seeks the validation of the King of Norway and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. I have had little regard for the latter at least since they enNobelled the world's Numero Uno celeb terrorist and Slav rent-boy addict Yasser Arafat. By comparison, this year's winner, the little-known Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, seems a more or less deserving winner. As for Trump getting frosted out, Reuters reports: Ahead of the Nobel announcement, experts on the award had...

Just one day after the two-year anniversary of the horrific October 7 attack by Hamas, it was announced that Israel and Hamas accepted the terms of President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war. It was a feat that then-President Joe Biden could not accomplish. In fact, it was a feat that no other world leader could accomplish in the course of two years. And yet Trump, in 10 months, has ended a devastating war. Such a breakthrough would certainly warrant the Nobel Peace Prize.But on Friday it was announced that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the award....

The Nobel Peace Prize has become mired in scandal today after suspicious bets were placed before a longshot was announced as the winner. Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was an obscure candidate just 12 hours before she was announced as winner on Friday. Her victory stunned the world after Donald Trump secured a peace deal in Gaza, ending a two-year war that has killed more than 70,000 people. Machado had just a 5 percent chance of claiming victory, according to prediction market Polymarket. But then a buying spree, from a newly created account '6741', rocketed her chances to 70...

Those of you who have been reading my AI reports know that with a few pointed questions I can get AI to produce reams of output. Starting with a few open-ended questions to set the table for the discussion, with pointed follow-up to the AI output, the AI searches the internet for volumes of sources from which to formulate its responses. What follows is a discussion on the Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump's approach to international diplomacy, and the diplomatic inertial rot that seems to have infected the Nobel Prize Committee.Note that the footnotes have been removed; the embedded footnotes...

Everyone take a deep breath. No question Pres. Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025, but the just announced Prize was for 2024. Nominations are due in in January. Trump wasn't President yet. I'm sure he'll be nominated next year, and should be the ONLY nominee.

María Corina Machado, the 2025 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, dedicated her recognition on Friday to her Venezuelan people and to President Donald Trump, stating that Venezuelans need his support “more than ever.” The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its prize recipient on Friday morning Oslo time, awarding Machado for decades of advocacy against socialism in her native Venezuela. While the left-leaning Committee did not mention socialism at all in its announcement of the award, failing to recognize who is repressing the former Venezuelan National Assembly member, it did congratulate Machado for “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the...

The stuffy global elite is simply too self-congratulatory to recognize that their time is overOf course, Donald Trump has not won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Scandinavian grandees on the committee wouldn’t dream of honoring him. It was silly to think that they would. The award has gone instead to María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition figure, so well done to her. Still, it speaks to the fundamental vanity of our age that the Nobel is today’s big story, as if the complexity of world affairs can be boiled down to a yearly episode of Peace Has Got Talent.The headlines...

~As you know, I regret that Donald J Trump is susceptible to the blandishments of the Royal Family. Likewise, I regret that he seeks the validation of the King of Norway and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. I have had little regard for the latter at least since they enNobelled the world's Numero Uno celeb terrorist and Slav rent-boy addict Yasser Arafat. By comparison, this year's winner, the little-known Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, seems a more or less deserving winner. As for Trump getting frosted out, Reuters reports: Ahead of the Nobel announcement, experts on the award had...

As Robert reported earlier today, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize. My personal opinion is that if couldn't have been Donald Trump, this was the next best choice. Machado is the face of the movement that is looking communism in the eye in Latin America and telling it to take a hike — something that will eventually benefit every one of us here in the U.S. if it's successful. She's worked tirelessly at taking down the country's illegitimate narco-terrorist regime for years. As Robert reported earlier today, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the...