The White House on Friday criticised the Nobel Prize committee’s decision to grant the peace prize to a Venezuelan opposition leader instead of US President Donald Trump, who aggressively lobbied for the award and touted his role in brokering international ceasefire deals.

“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a post on X.

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee granted the annual award to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, citing “courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist” authoritarian leadership.

Trump has campaigned for the prize, and just this week announced a ceasefire and hostage deal to end the war in Gaza.

The president has not yet commented on the Nobel decision, but he did post three videos on his Truth Social account on Friday morning of supporters celebrating the Gaza deal.

Trump claims to have ended eight wars since taking office and insists he deserves the Nobel, though he said recently he fully expected to be passed over.

“Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” Trump told top US military leaders last month.

He said it would be a “big insult” to the United States if he didn’t get it.

Nominations for the Nobel must have been made before January 31 to be valid for this year’s prize. Trump returned to the White House for his second term in office on January 20.

• Rescue teams race to reach remote quake-hit mountain areas.
• Dozens injured and power lines down across Mindanao region.
• Tsunami warnings lifted after strong aftershocks shake southern area.
  

A powerful magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck off the southern Philippines on Friday, killing at least six people and triggering regional tsunami warnings that were later lifted.

The quake hit about 20 kilometres (12 miles) off Manay town in the Mindanao region at 9:43am, according to the United States Geological Survey.

It came just 11 days after a magnitude-6.9 earthquake killed 75 people and injured more than 1,200 in Cebu province, according to official data.

Three miners tunnelling for gold were killed when their shaft collapsed in the mountains west of Manay, rescue official Kent Simeon of Pantukan town told AFP. One miner was pulled out alive and several others were injured, he said.

“Some tunnels collapsed, but the miners managed to get out. In that particular area, only one incident was reported,” Simeon said, adding that rescuers were withdrawing from the remote site of Gumayan, accessible only by dirt bikes.

In Mati city, the largest urban centre near the epicentre, one person was killed when a wall collapsed, while another suffered a fatal heart attack, local officials said.

A separate fatality was reported in Davao city, more than 100 kilometres west of the epicentre, a city government statement said without giving details.

Philippine authorities issued a tsunami warning shortly after the quake, ordering evacuations along the eastern seaboard where waves of up to three metres (10 feet) were feared.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its own alert for the Philippines, Palau and Indonesia at around noon, saying there was “no longer a tsunami threat”.

‘People screamed and ran’

Wes Caasi, a local official in Tagum city, northwest of Manay, told AFP that a government event at the city hall descended into chaos as panicked attendees fled. “They screamed and ran.”

Confirming videos that circulated on social media, Caasi said she saw city workers scrambling down a metal Christmas tree they were decorating when the quake struck.

Other witnesses said they saw students and workers pouring out of schools, office buildings and shopping malls— though some footage shared on social media proved to be misinformation.

Many Visayan-language posts shared footage of a crane falling from a building and imagery of destroyed buildings, but AFP fact-checkers found both visuals predated the tremor.

So far, the tremors seem to have caused minor and scattered damage, according to witnesses.

More than 100 aftershocks were recorded, some reaching magnitude 5.0.

Dianne Lacorda, a police officer in Davao Oriental province, told AFP that power and communication lines were down, hampering damage assessments.

The provincial government said on Facebook that it had suspended classes “until further notice” and sent non-essential public workers home.

‘Shaking was so strong’

Christine Sierte, a teacher in the town of Compostela near Manay, told AFP she was in the middle of an online meeting when the violent shaking started.

“It was very slow at first, then it got stronger… That’s the longest time of my life. We weren’t able to walk out of the building immediately because the shaking was so strong,” she said.

“The ceilings of some offices fell, but luckily no one was injured,” she said, adding that some of the school’s approximately 1,000 students “suffered panic attacks and difficulty in breathing”.

Earthquakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

An 8.0-magnitude quake off Mindanao island’s southwest coast in 1976 unleashed a tsunami that left 8,000 people dead or missing in the Philippines’ deadliest single natural disaster.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for promoting democratic rights in her country and her struggle to achieve a transition to democracy, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

Following are some facts about the democracy campaigner:

Upper-class background

Maria Corina Machado, 58, was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 7, 1967. She is an industrial engineer by training, and her father was a prominent businessman in Venezuela’s steel industry. Her upper-class roots have made her a target of criticism from Venezuela’s governing socialist party.

In hiding

Machado won a resounding victory in the opposition’s primary election in 2023 and her rallies attracted large crowds, but a ban from holding public office prevented her from running for president against Nicolas Maduro in an election in 2024 and she went into hiding.

The country’s electoral authority and top court say Maduro, whose time in office has been marked by a deep economic and social crisis, won the election though they have never published detailed tallies.

Machado emerged from hiding to make a brief appearance during a protest before Maduro’s inauguration in January. She was briefly arrested and then freed.

Advocate of liberal economic reforms

Machado advocates for liberal economic reforms, including the privatisation of state-owned enterprises such as PDVSA, Venezuela’s oil company. She also supports the creation of welfare programs aimed at aiding the country’s poorest citizens.

Political activism

Her political activism has come at a cost, leaving her isolated as nearly all of her senior advisers have been detained or forced to leave the country. Machado herself has accused Maduro’s administration of operating as a “criminal mafia.”

Collective struggle

Though sometimes criticised for being egotistical — even by her own mother — Machado rarely speaks about herself in public. Instead, she frames her campaign as a collective struggle for redemption and unity, aiming to inspire hope among Venezuelans weary of economic hardship and social decay.