Six US scientists, a Turkish writer charged with insulting his country and a Bangladeshi banker who gives loans to beggars received the prestigious Nobel Prizes on Sunday with pomp and royal splendor.
Also honored in the twin award ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden, and Oslo, Norway, were findings that cemented the big-bang theory of the universe, broke new ground in genetic research and explored the relationship between inflation and unemployment.
Accepting his prize in the Norwegian capital, peace laureate Muhammad Yunus said he hoped his award would inspire "bold initiatives" to fight global poverty, and warned about the potential costs of globalization without help for the world's poor.
PHOTO: AFP
"To me, globalization is like a hundred-lane highway criss-crossing the world," Yunus told hundreds of guests at Oslo's City Hall, including Norway's royal family.
"If it is a free-for-all highway, its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies. Bangladeshi rickshaws will be thrown off the highway," he said.
Rules that also give the poorest "a piece of the action" will help the rest of the world, too, he said.
"Poverty is a threat to peace," Yunus said. "I believe putting resources into improving the lives of poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns."
Yunus, 66, shared the 10 million Swedish kronor (US$1.4 million) prize with his Grameen Bank for helping people rise above poverty by giving them microcredit -- small, usually unsecured loans.
Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the award was partially intended as an outstretched hand to the Islamic world in an era where Muslims are often demonized because of terrorism.
"The peace prize to Yunus and Grameen Bank is also support for the Muslim country of Bangladesh, and for the Muslim environments in the world that are working for dialogue and collaboration," he said.
The Nobel Prizes, announced in October, are always presented in the two capitals on Dec. 10 to mark the anniversary of the 1896 death of their creator, Alfred Nobel.
Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf presented the prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and economics as trumpet fanfares rang out in Stockholm's blue-hued concert hall.
Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk accepted the literature prize for a body of work that illustrates the struggle to find a balance between East and West. His novels include Snow and My Name Is Red.
"I still have that childish feeling of joy and happiness whenever I write," Pamuk said in his speech.
"[For] me, literature and writing are inextricably linked with happiness, or the lack of it ... unhappiness," he said.
Pamuk, 54, was tried earlier this year on charges of insulting his country for acknowledging the mass killing of Armenians in World War I, but the charges were dropped over a technicality.
Swedish Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said Pamuk had made his native Istanbul "indispensable literary territory" equal to Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's St Petersburg and to Irish author James Joyce's Dublin.
US researchers swept all the Nobel science awards this year for the first time since 1983.
The Nobel Prize in medicine went to Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes.
John Mather and George Smoot won the physics prize for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of how the universe was created.
Nobel physics committee chairman Per Carlson said that with their findings, "the first step toward understanding the development of structures in the universe had been taken."
Roger Kornberg won the prize in chemistry for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins, a process that could provide insight into defeating cancer and advancing stem cell research. His 88-year-old father, Arthur, who won the 1959 Nobel Prize in medicine, was attending the ceremony.
Economics winner Edmund Phelps was cited for research into the relationship between inflation and unemployment, giving governments better tools to formulate economic policy. The economics award is not an original Nobel Prize, but was created by the Bank of Sweden in 1968.
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
RSS